As California deaths reach plateau, experts are fearful about future

LOS ANGELES — Although some hope that the worst of California’s coronavirus crisis has passed, there are signs that the pandemic in the Golden State has merely stabilized, and the worst may be yet to come.

The number of COVID-19 deaths in California has hit a stubborn plateau, and the number of cases has not begun a sustained week-over-week decline, a Los Angeles Times analysis has found. For the seven-day period that ended Sunday, 503 people in California died from the virus — the secondhighest weekly death toll in the course of the pandemic, and a 1.6% increase from the previous week.

In fact, the latest tally shows that the death toll has continued to average about 500 fatalities each week over the past month. The week before last, there were 495 deaths. Prior to that, there were 542 fatalities, and the week before that, 497.

Coronavirus cases shot up to a new weekly record last week, with more than 13,000 new infections reported.

On Sunday, an influential coronavirus forecast projected a worsening death toll by early August. The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation now forecasts a California death toll of more than 6,000 by early August, up from 4,600 from a forecast issued a week ago — an increase of more than 1,400 deaths.

As of Monday morning, more than 2,700 coronavirus-related deaths had been recorded in California.

The state is among eight predicted to see the largest increases in projected cumulative deaths, according to a forecast issued May 4 and updated Sunday. This group of states included Pennsylvania, Illinois, Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri and Connecticut. As a whole, the U.S. is now projected to record more than 137,000 deaths by early August, up from a forecast of over 134,000 issued last week.

The U.S. death toll was more than 79,000 as of Monday morning, an astonishing total that has accumulated in less than three months. It has exceeded the death toll of the Vietnam War, in which more than 58,000 members of the U.S. Armed Forces died, and has surpassed the total number of deaths in the 2018-19 flu season, which was 34,200, and the preceding flu season, which was 61,000.

Experts attribute the rising forecast of coronavirus-linked deaths to the public growing more weary of stay-at-home orders, as well as moves across the nation to roll them back. California is in its eighth week of statewide restrictions aimed to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

“We’re seeing just explosive increases in mobility in a number of states that we expect will translate into more cases and deaths, you know, in 10 days from now,” the director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Dr. Chris Murray, said Sunday on the CBS program “Face the Nation.”

As government officials begin rolling back restrictions, health experts have urged caution and pushed back against the idea that officials need to choose between the economy and public health.

Reopening society at a dangerous pace and then being hit by a spike in deaths would shatter public confidence and hurt the economy further, they said. Polls show that large majorities want to move slowly on ending stay-at-home orders.