COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continued to tumble in California on Thursday, and state models are increasingly optimistic about the pandemic outlook.
With 5,525 new cases reported Thursday, according to data collected by this news organization, the California average for 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 6000 for the first time. time since before Thanksgiving.
The number of cases in California is down 87% from last month’s high and has been reduced by more than half in the past two weeks. Hospital admissions are down 73% from last month’s peak and 43% in the past two weeks, to an active total of 5,934 on Wednesday, according to state data.
According to state models, fewer Californians would have been hospitalized around this time next month than any other time in the pandemic’s record books, which date back to the last days of last March. By March 24, state models show that the number of active hospital admissions will have fallen below 2,000, and within a week of that, the total is expected to drop close to 1,000.
For nearly 11 months, at least 2,000 Californians have been hospitalized for COVID-19 at one time. The only recorded pandemic in California with less than 2,000 active hospital admissions occurred during the first four days of record keeping, from March 29 to April 1 last year.
To reach the expected total next month, hospital admissions in California would need to drop by an additional 82%.
As transmission declines, hospitalizations have followed.
When California launched its updated modeling tool in the second week of December, the state’s reproductive rate of the virus was 1.2, meaning a single infected person would spread the virus to more than one other person on average, a formula for exponential growth.
Now the statewide ‘R-effective’ rate has fallen to 0.69, and the spread is likely to be narrowing, meaning the rate is 0.9 or less, in all countries except seven, according to the state models. In the Bay Area, reproductive rates range from .83 in Marin County to 0.64 in Alameda County.
As a region, the Bay Area’s improvement has been somewhat outdated by the state. Cases in the region are down about 83% from last month’s peak and 47% in the past two weeks. Southern California has had an average of a tenth of the cases since last month’s peak, including a 55% drop in the past two weeks.
With a peak infection rate last month more than double that of the Bay Area, per capita, Southern California continues to have 13.8 daily cases per 100,000 residents higher than the Bay Area 10.5 per 100,000 over the past week, despite a more drastic decline.
Southern California is still feeling the effects of the state’s largest and most persistent outbreak, again accounting for the majority of fatalities reported Thursday, though less than the region’s inordinate share of the total death toll.
On Thursday, the death toll in California rose 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 was responsible for about 65% of the statewide fatalities Thursday and is responsible for nearly three in four deaths since the pandemic began, despite being just under 60% of the population of the pandemic. state matters.
In the Bay Area, there were 51 deaths between regions, 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 is responsible for about one in nine California deaths, while about one in five Californians live there.
The deaths are occurring in smaller numbers everywhere than around this time last month. According to state models, the death toll in California will have increased by less than 4,000 in a month, and nearly 55,000 by March 20.