State models project record lows this time next month

COVID-19’s reproductive rate has fallen from 1.2 to 0.69

COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continued to tumble Thursday in California, and state models are increasingly bullish on its outlook in the pandemic.

With 5,525 new cases reported Thursday, according to data compiled by The Mercury News, California’s average over the past week fell to its lowest point since the first week of November, while the number of Californians hospitalized with COVID-19 fell below 6,000 for the first time since prior to Thanksgiving.

California’s cases have declined 87% from last month’s peak and been cut by more than half in the past two weeks. Hospitalizations have fallen 73% from last month’s peak and by 43% in the past two weeks, to an active total of 5,934, as of Wednesday, according to state data.

By this time next month, according to state models, there could be fewer Californians hospitalized than any other time in the pandemic’s record books, which date back to the final days of last March. By March 24, active hospitalizations will have fallen below 2,000, according to the state models, and within a week after that, the total is projected to fall close to 1,000.

For nearly 11 months, a minimum 2,000 Californians at any one time have been hospitalized for COVID-19. The only period of the pandemic on record in California with fewer than 2,000 active hospitalizations came during the first four days of record-keeping, from March 29 to April 1 of last year.

To reach the projected total next month, California’s hospitalizations would have to fall by another 82%.

As transmission falls, hospitalizations have followed.

When California launched its updated modeling tool in the second week of December, the reproductive rate of the virus in the state was 1.2, meaning a single infected person would spread the virus to an average of more than one other person, a formula for exponential growth.

Now, the statewide “Reffective” rate has fallen to 0.69, and spread is likely decreasing, meaning a rate of 0.9 or lower, in all but seven counties, according to the state models. In the Bay Area, the reproductive rates range from 0.83 in Marin County to 0.64 in Alameda County.

As a region, the Bay Area’s improvement has been slightly outpaced by the state. Cases in the region have fallen approximately 83% from last month’s peak and 47% in the past two weeks. Southern California is averaging one-tenth of the cases from its peak last month, including a 55% decline in the past two weeks.

With a peak infection rate last month more than double that of the Bay Area, per-capita, Southern California’s 13.8 daily cases per 100,000 residents over the past week remains higher than the Bay Area’s 10.5 per 100,000, despite a more drastic decline.

Southern California is still feeling the effects of the state’s largest and most sustained outbreak, once again accounting for the majority of the fatalities reported on Thursday, though less than the region’s outsized share of the overall death toll.

On Thursday, California’s death toll increased to 51,384 with 394 new fatalities.

Los Angeles County reported 115 new deaths, followed by 42 in Riverside County, 41 in Orange County and 30 in San Diego County.

In total, Southern California accounted for about 65% of the statewide fatalities Thursday and has been responsible for nearly three in every four deaths since the onset of the pandemic, despite making up just below 60% of the state’s population.

In the Bay Area, there were 51 deaths reported between its locales, led by 19 in Contra Costa and 18 in Santa Clara counties. Alameda County also added six deaths, and San Francisco reported four. Over the course of the pandemic, the region has accounted for approximately one in every nine of California’s fatalities, while being home to about one in every five Californians.

Deaths everywhere are coming in smaller numbers than this time last month. A month from now, California’s death toll is projected to have grown by fewer than 4,000, according to the state models, climbing close to 55,000 by March 20.