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While state and local authorities have generally noticed that California’s Covid cases appeared to be leveling off, Monday brought a new daily record for the state’s summer outbreak. The 14,968 new cases reported today are the highest number of new infections the state has seen since January 31 and well above the peak of the 2020 summer wave of 12,614 on August 14 of the same year .
It should be noted that the state’s data dashboard shows 33,407 new cases as of August 31, 2021, but that number likely includes a very significant number from the previous day, which did not list any new cases.
Speaking of which, the state dashboard numbers have taken wild swings lately, particularly on Friday. As of Friday, August 13, 14,099 new cases were reported, leading to the biggest one-day jump in the pandemic, an increase of nearly 4,000 cases. A week earlier, cases had also jumped nearly 50% in 24 hours, from 9,517 to 14,402. As noted above, on July 31, the number of new cases recorded in the state was zero. Some cases are also backdated, which can change the numbers after the fact.
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The number of new cases per 100,000 may be a better indicator. It is calculated based on the seven day average with a seven day lag and therefore tends to smooth out peaks and troughs in daily reports.
Today, the number of new cases per 100,000 stands at 28.3. That’s down, but only a few tenths of a point from the rates announced last week.
Another fairly accurate number is the count of hospital admissions, as hospitals are used to counting patients in beds on a daily basis. The total number of hospitalized patients with Covid-19 was 8,679 today. That’s 30 people short of a new high for the current outbreak and about on par with the peak of the summer 2020 outbreak, despite vaccinations.
The same story is playing out nationally, with the New York Times reporting today that “the average daily hospitalized Covid-19 patient in the United States is now over 100,000 over the past week”. The newspaper says the average is higher than at any time other than last winter’s surge.
Likewise, intensive care beds are filled with people with Covid. Critical care slots available in California fell to 1,601 on Friday. That’s the lowest it was this summer. It’s also well below anytime during the 2020 summer outbreak and below the level of intensive care beds available when the state’s stay-at-home order was issued last December, according to the Orange County Register.
An increase in cases among young Californians, due in part to a return to school, a dramatic increase in campus and workplace testing, and of course, the more infectious Delta variant is contributing to that high number.
In Los Angeles County, the average number of cases per 100,000 unvaccinated people under the age of 18 last week fell from 73 per 100,000 to 307 cases per 100,000. Among those under 18 who have been vaccinated , the increase rose from 11 per 100,000 to 78 per 100,000 last week, according to LA County public health officials.
The increase can, in part, be attributed to the return of children to crowded school environments.
The county registered 3,186 new cases in schools the week of August 16. This total includes LAUSD and other campuses. About 2,500 of these infections were single cases. About 3,500 students who were in close contact with those infected have also been quarantined.
The new highs place the current peak of this summer’s rise more than a month later than last summer’s rise, when health professionals begged Americans to cut numbers before fall and winter . They feared a coming winter surge, which occurs every year with many infectious diseases, with Covid starting at a much higher level of daily infections than normal winter viral outbreaks.
These warnings could apply to an even greater extent in the winter of 2021-2022, as the number of cases is now higher and the number of intensive care beds lower – both a month later – than in 2020.
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