The California coronavirus boom is starting to result in record deaths before Christmas as hospitals grapple with capacity and the dizzying caseload shows little sign of declining.
Local officials counted 363 deaths Tuesday, a high that follows just the 428 deaths reported on December 16 and was well above the previous mid-July peak of 215 deaths. Nearly 36,000 new cases have since been reported, keeping the seven-day average for new cases stable at 45,388, according to data collected by this news organization – an increase of more than 80% from just two weeks ago.
Hospitals are overwhelmed for days by the increasing need for care; According to the California Department of Public Health, 17,843 coronavirus patients were hospitalized statewide on Monday. Only 1.4% of beds in the intensive care unit are available, with a 0% capacity in the Southern California state epicenter. The Bay Area has approximately 13.5% ICU capacity.
The coronavirus has exploded nationwide during the holiday season as people experience “pandemic fatigue,” which led to the first sky-high infections and now deaths across California. Before December, the state’s worst attack with COVID-19 occurred in mid-July, when the death record was only 215 and the seven-day average never surpassed 10,000 daily infections.
The holiday wave has shattered those previous records, putting the state in its worst position yet since the pandemic started about nine months ago. The seven-day daily infection rate in California is now more than three times higher than in July, while the seven-day death rate is nearly twice the previous high in early August. The test positivity rate is about 13.3%, a sharp rise after hovering below 5% for most of the fall and surpassing the US overall rate of about 11.1%, according to the COVID-19 tracking project of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Los Angeles County remains the epicenter of the virus, accounting for about a third of the state’s caseload and nearly 40% of the more than 23,000 deaths recorded. Local officials, including Dr. Christina Ghaly, director of LA County Health Services, is begging residents to stay home during the holidays – rather than using COVID-19 testing prior to the trip – as hospitals erode capacity.
Los Angeles was responsible for 85 of Tuesday’s more than 350 deaths, second only to Fresno, which reported 89 deaths.
In the 10-county Bay Area, Santa Clara County recorded the most cases and deaths total during the pandemic, followed by Alameda and Contra Costa. The region as a whole reported 39 deaths on Tuesday, including 21 in Alameda, eight in Santa Clara, five in San Mateo, three in Sonoma and two in Napa, plus more than 4,000 new cases.
While the region has retained more hospital capacity than Southern California in recent weeks, Christmas is more likely to cause infections and hospitalizations. According to an analysis by the Bay Area News Group, the number of cases in the region has skyrocketed in the weeks following Thanksgiving, partly due to family and friends gatherings, experts say.