There were signs to start the week that the coronavirus crisis had begun to shift away from California’s largest and hardest-hit county, even if deaths haven’t slowed down yet.
Another 94 fatalities attributed to COVID-19 were reported around California on Monday, raising that seven-day average to a new high of 112 deaths per day over the past week, according to data compiled by this news organization. The 10,668 new cases were slightly fewer than last Monday, which kept that seven-day average stagnant at around 9,265 positive tests per day over the past week, about where it has been for close to three weeks.
In Los Angeles County, the number of new cases each day has been trending downward for two weeks as the seven-day average there reached its lowest level since July 6 (2,426 cases per day). With 2,033 new cases Monday, it has now recorded that many or fewer on four of the past five days — a feat it had managed on only one other day since the July 4th holiday weekend. It has accounted for 31% of the state’s total cases in the past two weeks, down from near 50% and closer to its proportion of the population (about 25%).
Monday was also the rare day where the nation’s largest county, home to some 10 million people, did not report the most deaths in the state. That unenviable distinction belonged to Riverside County, which reported 1,720 new cases and 34 deaths in its first update since Friday. No other county reported more than 10, though the six in Sacramento County was its second-most in a single day and ranked fourth in the state, while Tuolumne County, which has reported only 131 total cases to date, recorded its first two deaths of the pandemic.
Gov. Gavin Newsom stood in one of California’s new hot spots Monday as he announced a round of relief funds for the Central Valley, parts of which have supplanted Southern California as the state’s worst vectors of the virus.
Fresno, San Joaquin, Kern, Tulare and Stanislaus counties all reported more new cases Monday than any jurisdiction in the Bay Area, despite a fraction of the population. All five were among the top 13 statewide in case growth Monday, despite only Fresno (10th) and Kern (11th) ranking that high in population among the state’s 58 counties.
In the agricultural basin between San Joaquin and Kern counties, the per-capita average for new cases had reached 52.6 per 100,000 residents per day on Monday — a growth rate twice what Harvard scientists categorize as “red” or the highest risk level for spread. In Los Angeles County, that rate hit 36.9 per 100,000 at its peak and had fallen to 24.3 in the 15 days since. The Bay Area’s per-capita case rate Monday was 12.1 per 100,000 residents per day, averaged over the past week.
Those counties have also seen their per-capita hospitalizations rise higher than the peak so far in Los Angeles, which hit a new high July 18 but has since dropped off about 8%. In those Central Valley counties, there were 30.2 patients currently hospitalized Sunday for every 100,000 residents, compared to 20.5 per 100,000 in Los Angeles and 9.7 per 100,000 in the Bay Area.
In Tulare and Stanislaus counties, the test positivity rate had soared to 17.7%, while it was up to 10.7% in Fresno, Newsom said Monday. Both were significantly higher than the state as a whole, which has seen its seven-day rate plateau between 7% and 8% since the second week of July.
“The moment is now … to get a handle on what’s happening in the Central Valley,” said Dr. Mark Ghaly, the state’s top health official, who joined Newsom in Stockton.
In the Bay Area, the average number of new cases per day was within two percentage points of where it was a week ago, though it remained three times higher than five weeks ago (969 per day vs. 295 on June 20), before the recent spike in cases. Santa Clara County reported the most new cases in the region Monday (174), followed by Solano (154) — which also reported the lone fatality in the Bay Area — Contra Costa (140), San Mateo (102) and San Francisco (90).
Hospitalizations in the Bay Area have slightly outpaced the state over the past two weeks, though both have leveled off from the rapid increases seen earlier in the month.
The number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in the Bay Area (773 on Sunday) had grown about 10% in the past week and 28% in the past two weeks, with the largest increases in Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties. Statewide, the 6,935 patients Sunday was within a percentage point of this time last week and about 7% higher than two weeks ago.
The total number of cases in the Bay Area crossed 50,000 on Monday, a little over 10% of the state’s count, which reached 463,327, according to data compiled by this news organization. The 765 victims to the virus in the region amount to less than 9% of the statewide death toll, despite the Bay Area accounting for 20% of the state’s 39.5 million people.
California’s death toll from the virus hit 8,544 on Monday and was rising faster than at any other point of the pandemic. The 112-per-day average over the past week is double the death rate from a month ago, when about 63 Californians were dying from the virus each day.
The new deaths Monday pushed California past Massachusetts on the morbid leaderboard; only New York and New Jersey have reported more fatalities from the virus. Although, on a per-capita basis, California doesn’t crack the top 25 in deaths or top 20 in cases.
The U.S. has continued to add about 65,000 new cases per day for going on two weeks now. The country’s case count reached 4.3 million on Monday, while the death toll was nearing 150,000 — both numbers higher than any other country in the world.
