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As Gov. Gavin Newsom rescinded the California stay-at-home order on Monday, COVID-19 hospitalizations in the state continued to drop and its average daily cases remained near their lowest point in months .
California hospitals have lost an average of 300 patients a day since peaking just over two weeks ago and recently fell to 17,432 active hospitalizations on Sunday, a 20% drop in the past two weeks. The rate of positive tests has also dropped significantly, to 8% of all tests last week, after that figure hit 14% two weeks ago. With about 28,180 new cases per day over the past week, California has recorded the fewest infections on average since the second week of December, according to data compiled by this news agency.
However, California is still in the middle of its deadliest period in the pandemic. With a monthly death toll of more than 11,500 and still six days to come, January is on track to not only be the deadliest month in the pandemic in California, but will do so twice. California’s cumulative death toll rose to 37,499 – more than any other state except New York – on Monday, with 434 newly reported deaths. That brought the seven-day total to 3,766, an average of 538 per day, surpassing a period earlier this month as the deadliest seven days of the pandemic for the state.
During the pandemic, the Bay Area was able to push back the massive deaths seen in the southern part of the state. On Monday, however, Santa Clara County recorded the state’s third-highest death toll – 53, which includes data delayed from the weekend – its highest total reported on each day of the pandemic. Elsewhere in the region, there have been an additional 16 deaths spread across Santa Cruz, Solano, Napa, Marin and Alameda counties.
Although about one in five Californians resides in the Bay Area, only one in 10 deaths from COVID-19 has occurred in the region. Southern California, which accounts for just over half of the state’s population, has been responsible for more than two in three deaths in the state since the start of the pandemic – and an even larger proportion in in the past month, nearly three in four deaths.
The deaths reported on Monday pushed the total in Santa Clara County to more than 1,200, the highest death toll in the Bay Area and number six in the state. The above five counties are all in southern California, led by Los Angeles County, where more than 15,000 residents have died from COVID-19.
In a rare event, Los Angeles County reported 10 fewer deaths than Santa Clara County on Monday, but two other counties in Southern California took the top two spots: Riverside County, where there were 80 deaths reported Monday, and Orange County, where there were 66. Elsewhere in Southern California, Ventura and Imperial counties were also in the top 10 statewide, with 18 and 17 deaths, respectively.
In the San Joaquin Valley, three counties reported double-digit death tolls Monday: San Joaquin, with 27; Fresno, with 24; and Tulare, with 11. The total death toll in Fresno County ranks seventh in California, just behind Sacramento County, where the death toll rose from 28 Monday to 1,185.
Nationally, the trend in the United States is similar to that in California: infections are down drastically and hospitalizations have started to follow. After spending much of the last month leading the country, the recent reduction in the number of cases in California has allowed a handful of other states to surpass the number of infections per capita over the past week, but at About 65 daily cases per 100,000 people, California still ranks in the top 10 nationally.
But deaths in the United States continue to occur in some of the largest numbers in the pandemic. As of Monday, the nation’s death toll topped 420,000, according to data collected by the New York Times, and the virus still kills an average of more than 3,000 Americans a day.
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