Despite rising rates of coronavirus cases in other parts of the country, California continues to see a downward trend in metrics.
At least for a while.
Even though the state’s numbers remain comparatively positive, officials are asking for caution – saying that California cannot afford to see its progress reverse anytime soon after emerging from its dire autumn and winter wave.
Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said the high number of cases elsewhere should be of particular concern because what happens in other parts of the country is likely to have consequences for California.
And with much of the state unlocking long-closed deals and other activities, the stakes remain high – and the danger of increased transmission remains real.
Californian trends
In the past week, the state reported an average of 2,766 new cases of coronavirus a day, a 35% reduction from two weeks ago, show data compiled by The Times.
Across the state, 2,586 patients with COVID-19 were hospitalized on Monday; 635 were in intensive care. Both numbers have returned to levels not seen since the start of California’s last wave.
The number of COVID-19 deaths recently reported also continues to decline, but has not yet reached levels prior to the sudden increase. An average of 183 Californians died of the disease every day for the past week, and the total death toll in the state has exceeded 57,200.
On Tuesday, California’s seven-day case rate per 100,000 people was among the lowest in the country at 46.8, according to the CDC. The only states with the best rates were Arizona, 46.1, Oregon, 45.5 and Hawaii, 37.
Case rates for the same period were 319.2 in New Jersey, 311.1 in New York City, 222.1 in the rest of New York State, 162.8 in Pennsylvania, 143.9 in Florida and 91.6 in Texas.
The most recent case rate across the country was 116.1.
But just because California is doing well doesn’t mean it’s time to celebrate, Ferrer warned.
“The past year indicates that the East Coast often experiences case increases before the West Coast and that LA County is typically a few weeks behind New York,” she told the county Council of Supervisors on Tuesday. “Although conditions have definitely changed, mainly because we vaccinated millions of individuals in the past three months, we still don’t have enough vaccine protection across the county to prevent further transmission if we are not extraordinarily careful in the coming weeks. “
National notices
Officials across California and the country emphasize that residents must remain vigilant to avoid another wave. This is especially true as more areas remove restrictions related to the pandemic – a delicate process that experts warn can easily go wrong.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Monday that “the continued relaxation of prevention measures while cases are still high and while variants are spreading rapidly across the United States it is a serious threat to the progress that we have made as a nation. “
“Believe me, I understand,” she said during a briefing. “We all want to go back to our daily activities and spend time with our family, friends and loved ones, but we must find the courage to take it a little longer. We are at a critical point in this pandemic, a fork in the road where we, as a country, must decide which way to go. We must act now. And I am concerned that if we do not take the right measures now, we will have another preventable outbreak – just as we are seeing in Europe now and just as we are intensifying vaccination so aggressively. “
Ferrer agreed.
“Everyone is exhausted by this pandemic and the restrictions, but we don’t want to do anything to facilitate the increase in transmission rates in our community,” she said. “This is not just a disaster for everyone, because then we will have more transmission in the community, and this translates into more outbreaks in newly reopened places, such as schools, but it is also a disaster because it allows for a variant with a lot more opportunities to become dominant. “
The vaccine race
In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic has turned into a race against time, with health officials pressing to vaccinate as many people as possible as quickly as possible.
California expects to receive about 1.8 million doses this week – slightly above last week’s quota, according to Governor Gavin Newsom.
But weekly remittances of this size are not enough to keep pace with the state’s vaccination rate.
In the past seven days, providers across the state have administered an average of 378,115 doses per day, the Times data shows.
Overall, more than 15.1 million doses of the vaccine – about 78% of the delivery that was delivered to local public health departments and medical providers – have been administered across the state, according to the California Department of Public Health .
And many officials are taking an optimistic tone that the vaccine’s distribution could be significantly expanded in the near future.
Earlier this month, President Biden said restrictions on who could make an appointment for the COVID-19 vaccine would be lifted across the country until May 1, when the offer is expected to be sufficient to meet demand.
And Newsom said on Friday that state officials anticipated the possibility of making injections available to everyone “within 5 and a half weeks … because supply will increase exponentially”
A key factor in the broad expansion of access will be the availability of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine – which, unlike the others manufactured by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, requires only a single injection.
Shipments of this vaccine were blocked by production problems, however. LA County, for example, expects to receive only about 6,000 doses from Johnson & Johnson this week.
While officials are confident that a larger supply flow is on the horizon, they said the next few weeks will be critical to finally defeating COVID-19.
During the next spring break season, “we will all need to avoid large meetings, crowds and non-essential trips,” said Ferrer. “These actions have had disastrous consequences for our community in the past. Our common goal is to keep each other alive to allow everyone to be vaccinated and have an extra layer of protection. “