In the last gloomy sign of how deadly the most recent days of the COVID-19 pandemic have been, California on Thursday reported more than 500 lives lost to the virus, but the average daily death toll in the state has declined after the final count It was completed.
Average daily deaths from COVID-19 skyrocketed for more than a month in California, but fell slightly on Thursday from the highest point in the pandemic to around 369 a day last week, after county health departments reported. 508 deaths across the state, according to data compiled by this news organization. After a post-Christmas lull, the state’s case count increased slightly again to around 39,700 a day last week, after there were another 40,196 reported across the state on Thursday.
The virus has killed more than 1,000 Californians in the past 48 hours, the state’s most deadly two-day pandemic period. However, no day exceeded New Year’s Eve, when 571 deaths were recorded, which were replaced in the calculation of the seven-day average by the 508 recorded on Thursday, causing it to fall. Still, more than 2,500 Californians have lost their lives to the virus just since the beginning of the new year, a weekly total greater than a few months before the pandemic, the equivalent of one death every four minutes.
Nationally, the United States broke its daily death record for the second consecutive day and recorded more than 4,000 deaths in 24 hours for the first time of the pandemic, according to data collected by the New York Times. In the first week of the new year, more than 19,400 Americans lost their lives to the virus, according to data from the Times, the most lethal pandemic week in the country.
Although the national case count surpassed its pre-Christmas peak, California still averages about 12% fewer cases than it was at its peak before the holiday. Since Monday, however, the average daily infections have increased by about 10%. Even counting its huge population, only two states registered more infections per capita last week, and only three have a higher proportion of residents currently hospitalized with the virus.
Hospital admissions have declined across California, but there are still more COVID-positive patients hospitalized across the state than anywhere else in the pandemic. On Wednesday, the asset count rose to 21,939, according to the latest state data, including 4,712 intensive care patients.
In the Bay Area, ICU capacity fell to the lowest point in the pandemic, with only 3.5% of beds staffed and licensed in the region available, according to state data. While most fatalities continued to occur in Southern California, where hospitals have been operating at high capacity for more than two weeks, there was also a substantial number of deaths on Wednesday in the bay area.
The first refrigerated trailers ordered by the state, destined for the temporary storage of corpses, arrived this week in Imperial County, with others on the way to other hard-hit locations, including Sonoma County, according to the Office of Emergency Services. They were also deployed in Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Monterey counties.
Los Angeles County, where nearly half of the fatalities across the state occurred last week, reported an additional 217 on Thursday, followed by three other Southern California locations: San Diego County, with 47; Riverside County, 38; and Orange County, with 29.
In the Bay Area region, which according to the state’s home order includes Santa Cruz and Monterey counties, the past three days have brought three of the region’s four largest deaths in the pandemic, including 75 on Thursday. In Santa Clara County, 16 fatalities on Thursday increased the number of cumulative deaths to more than 800. In Alameda County, there were also 16 deaths, increasing the cumulative total to 700. And in Santa Cruz County, the number of Accumulated deaths exceeded 100, after another seven reported on Thursday. In other parts of the region, Contra Costa also reported 16 new deaths, bringing the total to 371; Sonoma County added nine to its count, which grew to 213; and the death toll in San Francisco increased by two to 205.
The death toll across the state on Wednesday exceeded 500 for the third time in the pandemic, all occurring in the past eight days.
In the bay area, deaths have increased by 40% in the past two weeks, but continue to occur at the lowest per capita rate of any region in California. In contrast, southern California reported substantially higher rates of infections and fatalities per capita last week than any other region in California. Just last week, about one in 140 Californians tested positive for COVID-19, compared with about one in 120 in Southern California and about one in 260 in the bay area.