Four times now in the past eight days, California has set records for COVID-19 deaths in a single day.
This time the state obliterated its previous mark, reporting 193 fatalities on Wednesday, 29 more than the previous record set the day before, according to data compiled by this news organization. It also reported its third-highest number of new cases, 11,965, though the seven-day average remained steady around 9,200 per day, about where it has been for the past two weeks.
In that time, California has gone from averaging 91 fatalities per day from the virus to 124 per day, where it was at Tuesday, higher than at any other point of the pandemic. For comparison, there were 432 fatalities around the state during the week that ended July 4; over the past seven days, there have been twice that many — 870.
A larger share of those in the past week have come in the Central Valley with a decreasing portion in Los Angeles County, though LA contributed an outsized share of Tuesday’s cases (4,741) and deaths (90, a new record). Thirty-five percent of virus deaths in the state in the past week have come in Los Angeles (which has about 25% of the state’s population) — down slightly from the first week in July — but the San Joaquin Valley had grown to 16% of the total over the past week, despite accounting for about 10% of the population.
San Joaquin County reported its second consecutive day with double-digit deaths (13 on Tuesday) — something that had happened just once prior to this week – while San Bernardino County in the Inland Empire reported its most deaths of the pandemic (24).
The Bay Area also had one of its deadliest days of the pandemic, with 19 fatalities spread around its nine counties. Marin and Sonoma counties each added seven new deaths, tied for the fifth-most in the state Tuesday, while there were two in Santa Clara and one apiece in San Francisco, Contra Costa and Solano counties.
Still, the region, which makes up about 20% of California’s population, had accounted for 8% of the deaths in the state over the past week.
It was the Bay Area’s second-most COVID-19 deaths in a day — topped only by one day three months ago, April 22, when 21 Bay Area residents perished from the disease — while the 1,315 new cases in the region were its most of the pandemic.
There were a staggering 410 new cases in Contra Costa County, the most by any Bay Area jurisdiction in a single day, followed by 253 in Santa Clara, 140 in Alameda, 132 in San Francisco and 108 in San Mateo. In total, the region was averaging about 970 new cases per day over the past week, fewer than a week ago but 157% more than five weeks ago.
The virus has slowed enough in the region for San Francisco, Santa Clara, Alameda, Napa and Sonoma counties to all bring their case rates below the state threshold of about 7 cases per 100,000 per day (100 total per-capita cases over 14 days). Every county in the Bay Area, however, remains on the state monitoring list; it requires a sustained decrease in spread to come off the list and for businesses to reopen.
The region as a whole has amounted to about 12.1 cases per 100,000 residents per day over the past week, according to this news organization’s analysis, well below the statewide rate of spread of about 23.2 per 100,000 (15th in the nation).
There were 16 counties in the state with per-capita case rate above 25, which Harvard scientists categorize as “red” or the highest risk level for spread, including all eight counties in the San Joaquin Valley. The rate across those counties was 50 new cases per 100,000 residents per day — double the minimum for Harvard’s worst designation.
The list has also grown to include counties as far north as Glenn and Colusa, with per-capita rates in the 30s; to the Central Coast in Monterey County, where the rate is right at 25 per 100,000; and over the Sierra Nevadas into Mono County, where 40.6 per 100,000 residents have tested positive per day in the past week.
The U.S. continues to add about 65,000 new cases each day — a per-capita rate of about 20 per 100,000 — as it has done for about the past two weeks. On Wednesday, the cumulative case count climbed to 4.4 million and the nationwide death toll crossed 150,000 — more than any other country — about 46 for every 100,000 Americans.
