Coronavirus cases in California rise for first time in months as Delta variant spreads

LOS ANGELES — After months of steady declines, coronavirus infections are once again on the rise in California as the state struggles with slowing daily vaccination rates and the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant.

While it’s too soon to say whether the upticks are a trend or a blip, health experts and state officials expressed confidence that California’s reopening and the return of something resembling normality were not in jeopardy.

“This is the call to anyone who hasn’t been vaccinated: Get vaccinated,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said during a briefing Wednesday. “What more evidence do you need?”

There is widespread scientific consensus that fully vaccinated people have an excellent chance of being protected from severe illness or death from any coronavirus strain, including Delta. In both Los Angeles and San Diego counties over the past half-year, 99.8% of people who died from COVID-19 had not been inoculated.

Overall levels of coronavirus cases and hospitalizations remain at historically low levels, and California has one of the highest vaccination rates in the nation, in a country that has one of the fastest vaccination rates in the world. The number of COVID-19 deaths reported daily in California remain among the lowest over the past 15 months — it’s down to 18 deaths a day, down from a peak of 537 deaths a day for the sevenday period ending Jan. 27.

Over the past seven days, in L.A. County, COVID-19 deaths have dropped to four a day; the San Francisco Bay Area, 1.5 a day; Orange County, 0.6 a day and San Diego County, 0.3 a day.

California averaged about 1,143 new daily coronavirus cases over the seven-day period that ended Tuesday, a 30% increase from mid-June. It’s part of an uptick that began shortly after the state fully reopened its economy on June 15. The lowest average number of cases since March 2020 occurred during the sevenday period ending June 24, when there were 881 a day reported.