California overtook New York City in total deaths from COVID-19 on Tuesday, claiming the outrageous title 11 months after the first American to die of the coronavirus was discovered in the Golden State.
The death toll in California rose by a further 513 on Tuesday, according to data collected by this news organization, to 44,996 since the start of the pandemic nearly a year ago. Although last spring’s devastating wave in New York has not been repeated anywhere else in the country, California, a state with twice the population of New York and 10 million more people than any other state, has seen the deadliest period of the pandemic in the country. registered in the past two years. months, reporting deaths three times faster than in New York in the past week.
But even deaths, which are considered the last lagging indicator of an outbreak, are starting to decline, now about a month away from the first signs of cases, and hospitalizations are leveling off. California’s curve has followed a similar trajectory to the country’s, which is also starting to see a declining number of new cases and deaths, as well as active hospital admissions.
In California, the average number of new cases continued to decline Tuesday, after 10,913 were reported in the state. With about 12,320 a day in the past week, California has nearly halved the number of cases from two weeks ago, a 47% decline, but infections are still coming at a faster rate than any point prior to the winter wave. The number of Californians hospitalized with COVID-19 has dropped 35% in the past two weeks to 11,198, as of Monday, the lowest point in more than two months, but still well above any point before Thanksgiving.
But the death toll in California has risen by more than 3,100 over the past week – an average of 445 a day – nearly 20% less than two weeks ago, but still tripling every seven-day period outside this winter. Two in five Californians who died during the entire pandemic have died since the calendar turned to 2021. Since the New Year began, California has recorded more than 18,500 fatalities from COVID-19, compared to just over 7,200 in New York, more than 12,000 in Texas, and about 6,500 in Florida – the three states with the second highest cumulative death toll (and populations).
April, the deadliest month of the New York pandemic, killed nearly 21,300, more than the nearly 15,000 lives lost in California last month, with about half the population.
Per capita, California ranks in less than all three of its major constituencies, including a pandemic-course death rate less than half that of New York, which is behind neighboring New York in terms of lives lost per capita. Jersey state. .
As cases in California have declined rapidly, so has its position on the national rankings of state infection rates. With about 31.2 daily cases per 100,000 residents in the past week, California has gone from top spot to 20th, according to the New York Times. However, according to the COVID Tracking Project, only six other states still have a greater proportion of their residents treated for the disease in hospitals; none have a higher total number of active hospital admissions.
In the Bay Area, cases have dropped dramatically enough that some local counties are starting to sniff out advanced reopening strokes.
There was no movement locally in the weekly update provided Tuesday, but the new state data did show that a number of counties were approaching to potentially progress to the red reopening tier, yielding an adjusted case rate of 7 / 100K or below and a positivity necessary. rate below 8%.
In San Francisco, the adjusted number of cases – a statistic that accounts for high-capacity testing – had dropped to 11.4 / 100K with a 2.7% positivity rate, both the lowest of any county in the region and a densely populated one province in the state. Across the street from the Golden Gate, Marin County is not far behind with an adjusted case rate of 15.6 / 100K and a positivity rate of 3.6%. Alameda, Santa Clara, San Mateo, and Santa Cruz counties also have adjusted rates below 20 / 100K, with every county in the region already meeting the red level positivity threshold.
Most of Southern California and the southern and western parts of the San Joaquin Valley remained deep in the most restrictive reopening level, with adjusted numbers of cases in nearly every county still three to five times above the red-tier threshold .
Southern California continued to be responsible for most of the deaths in the state, but a number of Bay Area counties also reported double-digit death tolls on Tuesday. There were a total of 77 reports in the region, including 30 in Santa Clara County, 14 in Contra Costa County, 11 in San Mateo County, and 10 in Alameda County.
Southern California counties accounted for the top four most fatalities reported Tuesday and 70% of the total statewide, led by 225 in Los Angeles County, 37 in Riverside County, 33 in Orange County and 32 in San Diego County.