State’s cases, hospitalizations continue to rise

Area followed with more than 8,000 new cases Tuesday

A day after recording its most new cases of COVID-19 since August, California reported an even larger number of new infections Tuesday.

Counties around the state on Tuesday combined to report 8,453 new cases of COVID-19 and another 64 fatalities from the virus, according to data compiled by this news organization. Tuesday’s total amounted to the most new cases in a single day since mid-August and raised the daily average to its highest point — 6,351 per day over the past week — since about the same time.

On Monday, the total number of patients receiving care for COVID-19 in the state reached 3,083 — a 32% increase in two weeks — according to the latest data from the California Department of Public Health.

For a span of nearly two months, there wasn’t a day when there were 3,000 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 around California. At its peak this summer, there were as many as 7,170 patients hospitalized across the state, but that figure fell below 3,000 on Sept. 11 and didn’t return to that level until Sunday.

Although some states are reaching the upper limits of their medical capacity amid a third wave sweeping across the nation, in California, active COVID-19 patients make up about 5% of the state’s total beds, Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a recent update.

Nationally, more Americans are hospitalized with the novel coronavirus now than ever before, according to the COVID Tracking Project. More than 5,000 patients have been admitted to hospitals just in the past 48 hours, as the total count grew to nearly 62,000 — a 40% increase in the past two weeks. Tuesday marked the first time of the pandemic that at least 60,000 patients were hospitalized at one time.

The U. S. is averaging 69% more new cases as of Tuesday — about 123,000 per day — than it was two weeks ago, according to data collected by the New York Times. In California, cases are up about 43% from two weeks ago, according to data compiled by this news organization, but the Bay Area is outpacing even the rest of the U.S.; the daily average here has soared by 71% in the past two weeks to about 890 per day.

On Tuesday, state health officials announced the most extensive backward movement yet in California’s tiered reopening system, including in Contra Costa and Santa Cruz counties. In San Francisco, officials independently chose to pause indoor dining and announced further rollbacks, as new cases there have more than doubled in the past two weeks.

Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the nation with some 10 million residents, led the state in new cases and fatalities repor ted Tuesday. The 2,251 new cases pushed its cumulative total to more than 325,000, while its death toll reached 7,200 with another 23 reported Tuesday.

Riverside County reported 14 new deaths from COV ID-19, followed by seven in San Diego County; no other jurisdiction reported more than three fatalities.

In the Bay Area, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties each reported three new fatalities, and Napa reported one.

Overall, fewer Californians have perished from COVID-19 in the past two weeks than at nearly any other point of the pandemic. However, epidemiologists have said deaths are a lagging indicator, which could mean the recent lull ref lects California’s long plateau of cases that preceded the current uptick.