For the second consecutive week, counties around California reported a record total of new COVID-19 cases on Monday, while hospitalizations also soared to another new high.
There were 21,457 new cases reported Monday, fueled by some counties updating their totals for the first time since before Thanksgiving, and another 62 deaths caused by COVID-19, according to data compiled by this news organization. The record number of cases topped the total from the previous Monday, the only other day of the pandemic there have been 20,000 or more cases reported in the state, and took the daily average to its highest point yet, just over 14,000 per day over the past week.
The prolonged surge in cases, which began about five weeks ago, has now resulted in the highest number of Californians actively hospitalized with severe cases of the virus.
Just over the weekend, hospitals in California added more than 800 new COVID-positive patients, with the active total reaching 7,787 by Sunday, according to the latest data from the California Department of Public Health. The state topped its previous high in hospitalizations — 7,170 on July 21 — on Saturday. California also has fewer intensive care units available than almost any other point of the pandemic, with exactly 2,000 available as of Sunday, slightly more than the ICU beds COVID patients are already occupying, which increased to 1,812 on Sunday.
In the past two weeks, California’s active hospitalizations have risen by 102%; 75% more patients have been intubated in ICUs; its average daily cases have risen by 60%; and the average daily death toll has increased by nearly 50%. The statewide positivity rate, which was 4.8% two weeks ago, has climbed to 6.5%, its highest point in more than three months.
For the first time of the pandemic, COVID-positive patients occupy at least one in 10 hospital beds statewide.
On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Dr. Mark Ghaly, the state’s top health official, teased even tighter restrictions if the surge in hospitalizations and intubations doesn’t slow down.
“What we worry about at this time specifically is ICUs,” Ghaly said, calling their capacity a possible trigger for new public health orders.
Santa Clara County, which reinstated its ban on live sports, reported its highest single-day case total of the pandemic, with 793 new infections Monday, raising the per-capita infection rate in the county to nearly 30 per 100,000 per day in the past week, the highest in the core five-county Bay Area.
Across the wider Bay Area, the 2,548 total new cases were the region’s most in a single day and increased the daily infection rate to its highest point of the pandemic, about 22.3 per 100,000 residents per day over the past week.
In Los Angeles County, where a new stay-at-home order took effect Monday, the cumulative case count crossed 400,000, with an average of 43.6 daily infections per 100,000 residents over the past week. With 400,919 cases and a death toll of 7,655, no other county in the nation has experienced more infections or fatalities from COVID-19 than Los Angeles.
The highest per-capita infection rates over the past two weeks have come in Lassen, Alpine, Kings, Imperial and Sutter counties. All are averaging more than 100 daily cases per 100,000 residents, though Lassen and Alpine have populations far smaller than that.
The infection rate in California — about 35.5 daily cases per 100,000 people — is well below the national average of about 48.9/100K and is lower than all but 15 other states.
California’s cumulative death toll climbed to 19,213, with an average of more than 63 lives lost to per day over the past week. Although California’s death toll ranks behind only New York and Texas, overall, on a per-capita basis, it is lower than all but 13 other states.
Nationally, more than 13.6 million Americans have been infected by the virus, with an average of more than 160,000 per day over the past week, according to the New York Times. The national death toll also crossed 268,000 Monday, coming at a clip of nearly 1,500 per day over the past week, according to the Times’ data.
