February marked by improvement, more deaths

With 11,280 deaths, February was California’s second-deadliest month of pandemic; 243K cases fewest since October

California’s winter wave of the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be heading to a close as February ended. But even with marked improvements, the shortest month of the year will go down as California’s second-deadliest of the pandemic.

With 2,901 new cases reported Sunday, according to data compiled by The Mercury News, California’s counties tallied fewer new infections than any day since Oct. 25. The day’s 224 deaths, however, raised the monthly death toll to 11,280, more than any other month but January, when the state recorded nearly 15,000 fatalities. With a total of approximately 243,000 cases over the course of the month, California recorded its fewest infections of any month since October. It had recorded over 1 million cases in each of the past two months.

California is averaging about a quarter of the new cases that it was when the month began, down 73% to approximately 5,050 per day over the past week from nearly 19,000 per day at the beginning of February. Deaths have fallen from a total of 3,147 during the first week of the month — about 450 per day — to 2,025 over the past week, an average of about 289 per day, 36% fewer than the first week of the month (excluding a backlog from Dec. 3-Feb. 3 reported this week in Los Angeles County).

Other metrics signal the worst of the winter wave, possibly the pandemic, could be behind California. Hospitalizations and the rate of positive tests are also down, and vaccine doses are up.

More than 8.8 million doses of the vaccine have been administered in California, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, meaning 15.5% of Californians have received at least one shot and 6.6% have received the full regimen. When the month began, the state was averaging about 155,000 shots per day but has increased the pace to 195,000 per day over the past week, according to tracking by Bloomberg News.

Officials are hopeful to ramp up the vaccinations even more with the recent approval of a third vaccine from Johnson & Johnson that requires only one shot. Gov. Gavin Newsom said California is expected to receive 380,000 doses from Johnson & Johnson in the next week and 1.1 million within three weeks.

The number of Californians

hospitalized with COVID-19 has fallen rapidly over the course of the month. When it began, there were more than 14,000 Californians hospitalized, twice as many than any point prior to the winter wave. The state has not yet updated hospital data for the final day of February, but as of Saturday, the active total of COVID-positive patients had fallen to 5,143, down 64% from the start of the month and its fewest since Nov. 20.

Throughout the month of February, California averaged a net loss of 336 patients per day. In December, as the state’s surge crested, its hospitalization count was growing by 388 per day, eventually topping out at nearly 22,000 in the first week of January.

California’s hospitalizations fell at a pace of approximately 2.3% per day throughout month of February, compared to a daily rate of about 1.3% during the month of August as it recovered from its surge last summer.

California had already cut its positivity rate by more than half when February began and did so once more over the course of the month. On Sunday,

the rate tests to come back positive over the past week fell to 2.4%, down from 6.4% to start the month and near its lowest point of the pandemic. California has never consistently recorded positivity rate below 2.5% but kept it at 3% or below from Sept. 19 to Oct. 24.

Despite those improvements, COVID-19 took the lives of more Californians in February than any other month but the one prior.

In the Bay Area, there were 1,153 fatalities recorded over the month of February, just over 10% of the statewide total — half the region’s share of the state’s population. The region’s monthly death toll was led by 363 in Santa Clara County, 262 in Alameda, 152 in Contra Costa, 133 in San Mateo and 88 in San Francisco.

In Los Angeles County, there were 4,665 fatalities recorded in February, more than two in every five in the state, despite being home to about one in every four Californians.

California’s COVID-19 0rogression, by the numbers*

Feb. 1-28: 11,280 deaths | 243,241 cases

Jan. 1-31: 14,952 deaths | 1,016,593 cases

Dec. 1-31: 6,758 deaths | 1,065,596 cases

Nov. 1-30: 1,548 deaths | 297,501 cases

Oct. 1-31: 1,767 deaths | 112,651 cases

Sept. 1-30: 2,897 deaths | 107,154 cases

Aug. 1-31: 3,796 deaths | 211,269 cases

July 1-31: 3,139 deaths | 262,878 cases

June 1-30: 1,945 deaths | 123,012 cases

May 1-31: 2,088 deaths | 62,877 cases

April 1-30: 1,917 deaths | 42,306 cases

Pre-April: 214 deaths |

9,846 cases

*cases and deaths reflect date they were reported

Source: Bay Area News Group tracking of county health department databases