State posts another staggering death toll
California recorded its secondmost casualties and its average daily case count continued to creep upward.
On another deadly day of the COVID-19 pandemic in California, the state recorded its second- most casualties and its average daily case count continued to creep upward.
California’s death toll grew Wednesday by 557, to over 28,000, and another 36,963 people tested positive for the virus, according to data compiled by this news organization. With an average of approximately 378 per day over the past week, California average daily death toll has grown by 50% in the past two weeks and the past seven days have been its deadliest of the pandemic. While the state’s case count has ticked up about 8% in the past three days, it is not accelerating at the same rate it was prior to Christmas. At about 38,800 per day, California is still averaging about 12% fewer new cases than it was two weeks ago.
Compared to the start of November, however, nearly 10 times as many Californians are being infected and dying from the virus every day.
Nationwide, the U.S. set another grim record with nearly 4,000 lives lost to the virus in a single day, and the number of Americans hospitalized with COVID-19 continued to climb. More than 132,000 people across the country are currently hospitalized with the virus, according to the COVID Tracking Project, including a record-high 21,922 in California.
In Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley, hospitals have been operating in surge capacity for over two weeks. Closer to home, in Santa Clara County, hospitals are teetering on capacity and some ambulances are being forced to wait hours to offload emergency-room patients, officials said Wednesday.
Overall ICU capacity in the Bay Area increased slightly to 7.4%, from 5.9% the day before, but remains well below the statemandated 15% threshold. Across the region, capacity varies wildly. In Santa Clara County, just 7% of ICU beds remain available, compared to 23% in San Francisco.
Once again, counties facing the most dire conditions in their ICUs also reported among the most deaths in the state.
Four counties in Southern California accounted for 65% of the deaths in California on Wednesday:
Los Angeles County, which reported its third-highest death toll with 257, one day after its cumulative total crossed 11,000; Riverside County, which reported 53 deaths, also its third-most of the pandemic; San Diego County, with 37, tied for its fifth-most; and Orange County, which added 17 to its death toll.
In the Bay Area, Santa Clara County reported the third-most deaths in the state, with 28 on Wednesday, bringing its cumulative death toll within one of 800. In Alameda County, which issued its first update since last week, the death toll grew by 16 on Wednesday to within three of 700. No other county in the region has reported more than 360 fatalities.
In the San Joaquin Valley, Tulare, Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties also all reported double- digit fatalities on Wednesday.
Although on a per- capita basis, the Bay Area is still reporting the fewest fatalities of any region in California, it is now averaging 53% more than it was two weeks ago, fueled in large part by the totals the past two days, which have brought two of its three deadliest days of the pandemic. In Southern California, however, there were approximately twice as many deaths per-capita as the Bay Area, and the San Joaquin Valley and Greater Sacramento regions reported per- capita rates about 33% higher.
While the infection rates over the past week in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley would rank among the worst states nationwide, the Bay Area and the state’s other two regions reported fewer cases percapita than the national average. All three regions had infection rates about half that of Southern California and two-thirds that of the San Joaquin Valley.
Statewide over the past week, at about 98 daily cases per 100,000 residents, California reported more per-capita infections than every state but Arizona and Rhode Island. While California is still reporting fewer cases than prior to Christmas, the country has surpassed its pre-holiday peak, with an average of about 230,000 cases per day over the past week, according to data collected by the New York Times. With 3,964 new fatalities Wednesday, according to the Times’ data, more than 361,000 Americans have now perished since the onset of the pandemic, after its deadliest single day yet.