California tops 100K COVID deaths as state preps to close book on state of emergency

It took three years and an infinite amount of heartache and upheaval for the Golden State to surpass a grim milestone this month: More than 100,000 Californians have died from COVID-19.

While it’s unclear where or exactly when the virus claimed its 100,000th victim in California in recent weeks, the number became official on Thursday with the latest release of data we’ve become intimate with since the pandemic began:

• Total COVID cases: 11,105,535.

• Total deaths: 100,187. The somber reminder of the virus’ deadly impact comes as California prepares to close the book on its pandemic state of emergency, even though COVID is still responsible for the deaths of about 150 Californians each week. But three years into the pandemic, strong therapeutics, our immunity from previous infections and the power of vaccines that blunt severe illness have cut the death toll from its peak of about 600 a day in January 2021.

The country’s most populous state is the first to cross the 100K mark in COVID deaths, but it is far from suffering the stain of the United States’ highest death rate. Thirty-nine states had higher rates than the Golden State, which benefited from aggressive public health mandates and high vaccination rates.

If the U.S. had California’s death rate, about 282,000 fewer people would have died.

But even here, those deaths, and the consequent grieving, have been concentrated in some counties and regions, while others have been almost spared.

California’s tiniest county, Alpine, with just over 1,000 residents, has yet to record any official COVID deaths — but that doesn’t tell the whole story. Nestled in the Sierra Nevada mountains just south of Lake Tahoe, Alpine has no health care facilities. So at least two Alpine residents who died of COVID were recorded as Nevada deaths because they died in a hospital across the state line, said the county’s Public Health Officer Richard Johnson.

Other rural counties were overcome by COVID deaths. On the southern edge of the state in Imperial County, on the border with Mexico, the death rate from the virus is more than double the statewide rate, and four times higher than the Bay Area’s.

“That’s been the theme of the pandemic,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health. “The Bay Area’s done better than California. California’s done better the United States.”