Amid a dramatic spike in cases of COVID-19 nationally, California is also beginning to see concerning signs of the virus re-emerging across the state.
There was hardly any slowdown in new cases over the weekend, despite many counties not releasing updated totals, as the seven-day average climbed to about 5,590 per day — a 27.6% increase in the past two weeks and nearly double the daily cases from a recent low point, Oct. 18, when the average briefly dipped below 3,000 cases per day.
On Sunday, county health departments around the state combined to report 4,943 new cases of COVID-19 and 10 more fatalities from the virus, according to data compiled by this news organization. Across California, there were 28.7% more patients hospitalized with COVID-19 than there were two weeks ago: a total of 2,902 as of Saturday, according to the latest data from the California Department of Public Health.
The recent uptick in California, however, pales in comparison to the nationwide surge.
The country is now averaging over 110,000 new cases per day, according to data collected by the New York Times, and smashing records almost daily. The daily average of cases has soared by 60% in the past two weeks, outpacing any growth in testing, while the rolling seven-day positivity rate on Sunday reached 8% for the first time since testing became widely available.
The question then is whether is California actually faring better than the nation or simply staring down its future?
For now, despite a number of troubling indicators, there are still, on average, fewer Californians infected with or receiving care for COVID-19, per capita than elsewhere in the U.S. For example, while there were about 237 new infections nationwide in the past week for every 100,000 Americans, in California, there were about 99 new infections for every 100,000 residents. A handful of states in the Midwest — North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Wisconsin — averaged more cases in a day than California reported in all of the past week, when accounting for population.
Nationwide, hospitalizations have spiked by 36% in the past two weeks, according to the COVID Tracking Project, and were now within 5% of two previous peaks during the first two surges in the spring and summer. While those surges were largely concentrated regionally — in New York and the Northeast, and then Texas and the Southwest, respectively — the current wave is far more widespread and impacting less populated communities without the robust medical infrastructure of many urban areas.
Meanwhile, about one in every 5,780 Americans is currently hospitalized with the coronavirus; while in California, the rate is about one in every 13,610. In the hardest-hit Midwestern state, per-capita, South Dakota, the rate reaches one in every 1,620 residents currently hospitalized.
The test positivity rate in California, while still about half the rate nationwide, is also on the rise.
On Sunday, it climbed to 3.9% — its highest point since the first week of September and an increase of a full point in just over a week. For comparison, the nationwide rate rose by 1.6 points in that time, and the 8% of tests coming back positive is the highest percentage since around Memorial Day, when the state was conducting about one-sixth the number of tests as it is now; the positivity rate had previously peaked at 7.9% in July.
The U.S. on Sunday became the first country to reach 10 million cumulative infections, according to the Times’ data. That means nearly one in every 30 Americans has caught the coronavirus, while with a death toll in excess of 237,000, one in every 1,400 or so Americans has died from the virus.
