California shatters another record as virus cases, deaths reach new highs
SAN JOSE — On the same day the first American received the COVID-19 vaccine, the country's death toll surpassed 300,000 and California shattered another record for daily infections, as officials warned the darkest days of the pandemic were still ahead, amid a glimmer of hope.
Monday afternoon in Los Angeles, the first nurse in California was inoculated. But by the end of that day's count, new cases around the state numbered 41,419, according to data compiled by this news organization, soaring past the previous record set last week, and a sliver of intensive-care beds remained open around the state.
“These are the folks we're going to count on the most,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a Tuesday morning news conference, commending the initial vaccine doses reaching frontline workers. “As I've said often, there's light at the end of the tunnel but we're still in the tunnel. That means we're going through perhaps the most intense and urgent moment since the beginning of this pandemic.”
At approximately 32,800 cases and 164 deaths per day over the past week, California is averaging more new infections and fatalities from the virus than any other point of the pandemic. It's the fourth time since the start of December that California has broken its daily record for cases, coming most recently last Friday, when the state reported more than 35,000 new cases. In the past two weeks, the state's average daily case count has increased 132% and its average daily death toll by even more: 157%.
California's cumulative death toll grew to 21,194, after counties around the state reported another 150 victims of the virus. A total of 1,145 Californians have been added to the state's death toll in the past week, more than any other seven-day period of the pandemic. The past seven days have also been the nation's deadliest, with more than 17,000 fatalities reported in the past week — an average of more than 2,400 per day — to bring the cumulative total over 301,000, according to the New York Times.
Hospitalizations also continued to grow in California while capacity in its ICUS fell to its lowest point of the pandemic. A net of nearly 600 patients were admitted to hospitals around California on Sunday, bringing the active total to 13,635, 75% more COVIDpositive patients than two weeks ago and nearly double its previous summertime peak. Statewide, ICU beds are 93.5% full but few remain available anywhere in the southern portion of the state.
In all of the Southern California region, ICUS were filled to more than 97% capacity Monday, according to the latest data from the state, and in the San Joaquin Valley region, staffed and licensed beds had reached capacity. The situation is less dire further north: 17.8% of ICU beds remain available in the Bay Area, 29% in Northern California and 14.8% in Greater Sacramento.
According to estimates from state health officials — that about 12% of cases require hospitalization and at least 12% of those end up in the ICU — the recordshattering surge of cases over the past week, totaling nearly 230,000, could result in more than 3,000 new ICU patients in the coming weeks, when there are currently just over 1,400 staffed and licensed beds available across the state.
“That should tell you that in the next couple weeks what our hospitals will be facing,” Dr. Mark Ghaly, the secretary of Health and Human Services, said Tuesday morning. “The amount of people knocking on the front door of the emergency department that need an inpatient hospital bed, that might need that ICU bed, is going to increase. Even though today we talk about ICU capacity being concerning … what we are really preparing for is two weeks from now.”
Newsom echoed that message and said the state's models were becoming “alarmingly” more accurate.
“The projections are manifesting,” Newsom said. “If you continue to project out the next few weeks, we are in that surge capacity in nearly every part of the state.”
Some of the new cases may be a product of enhanced detection. While the rate of tests coming back positive for COVID-19 shot up sharply around the end of November, growing by 4 percentage points in the course of two weeks, it has remained at about 10% for more than a week. In that time, the number of cases has continued to increase but so has the number of tests.
For the first time of the pandemic, California conducted more than 2 million tests over the past seven days, or an average of nearly 300,000 per day. That's a 31% increase from two weeks ago, when the state was conducting an average of about 225,000 tests per day.
But the fact remains that California's positivity rate is near its highest point of the pandemic — 10.6% of all those tests in the past week have come back positive — and, despite the increase in testing, the rise in cases has far outpaced it.