California becomes first state to pass 600,000 COVID-19 cases

LOS ANGELES — California has become the first state in the nation to surpass 600,000 confirmed coronavirus cases.

As of Thursday, there were more than 601,000 recorded cases. The state also reported 10,996 deaths.

Yet despite the grim numbers, there is growing evidence that the surge in infections and fatalities that began when California reopened its economy in May is beginning to slow.

In Los Angeles County, the effective transmission rate of the coronavirus is now about 0.86 — meaning that every one infected person passes the virus to an average of 0.86 other people. Last week, the rate was at 0.91.

And statewide, an ensemble computer model known as the California COVID Assessment Tool estimates California’s overall transmission rate is about 0.96.

When asked about the 600,000case milestone during a news briefing Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom

said he and his administration are more concerned with the state’s positivity rate — the proportion of people who test positive for the virus of all who have been tested — which currently sits at about 6.2%.

“That gives us a better sense of what’s really happening in terms of the community spread,” he said.

Newsom acknowledged that California’s efforts to ramp up its COVID-19 testing capabilities will logically increase the number of new infections that are uncovered. Over the past week, the state has conducted an average of about 137,000 daily tests, he said.

But, he added, “we’re not shying away from that; we’re not playing to the political frame that somehow tests are bad because they will, by definition, show a higher count of total number of positives.”

“This nation, I think, deserves to have a better sense — to know, ‘How prevalent is this disease?’” he said. “And I can assure you ... it’s significantly, I would argue, more prevalent than those numbers, even in California, suggest. And it’s simply because we haven’t put the testing protocols in place and we haven’t scaled our testing capacity as the most innovative nation on the planet. That includes California. We’ve got work to do.”

Hospitalizations are also falling in many regions of California. Statewide, the average number of people who were hospitalized seemed to peak in late July, when an average of nearly 7,000 people were in hospitals with confirmed coronavirus infections over a seven-day period; by Wednesday, that number had fallen to 5,710.