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COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continued to drop Thursday in California, and state models are increasingly optimistic about their prospects in the pandemic.
With 5,525 new cases reported Thursday, according to data compiled by this news agency, the California average over the past week has fallen 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 since before Thanksgiving.
Cases in California are down 87% from last month’s peak and have been cut by more than half in the past two weeks. Hospitalizations have fallen 73% from last month’s peak and 43% in the past two weeks, to an active total of 5,934 as of Wednesday, state data showed.
By this time next month, according to state models, there could be fewer Californians hospitalized than at any other time in pandemic records, which date back to the last days of last March. By March 24, active hospitalizations will have fallen below 2,000, according to state models, and in the week following the total is expected to drop to nearly 1,000.
For nearly 11 months, at least 2,000 Californians at a time have been hospitalized with COVID-19. The only period of the pandemic recorded in California with fewer than 2,000 active hospitalizations occurred during the first four days of recording, from March 29 to April 1 of last year.
To reach the projected total next month, hospitalizations in California are expected to drop another 82%.
As transmission decreases, hospitalizations have followed.
When California launched its updated modeling tool in the second week of December, the virus’s reproduction rate in the state was 1.2, meaning that a single infected person would transmit the virus at an average of more than one other person, a formula for exponential growth. .
Now the statewide “R-effective” rate has fallen to 0.69, and the spread is probably declining, meaning a rate of 0.9 or less, in all but seven counties. , according to state models. In the Bay Area, reproduction rates range from 0.83 in Marin County to 0.64 in Alameda County.
As a region, the improvement of the Bay Area has been slightly overtaken by the state. Cases in the region have fallen by about 83% from last month’s peak and 47% in the past two weeks. Southern California is averaging a tenth of cases from its peak last month, 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’s 13.8 daily cases per 100,000 population over the past week remains above 10.5 per 100,000 Bay Area residents, despite a more drastic decline.
Southern California is still feeling the brunt of the state’s largest and most sustained outbreak, once again accounting for the majority of deaths reported Thursday, although less than the region’s outsized share of the number total deaths.
California’s death toll rose to 51,384 on Thursday with 394 new deaths.
Los Angeles County has reported 115 new deaths, followed by 42 in Riverside County, 41 in Orange County and 30 in San Diego County.
In total, Southern California accounted for about 65% of deaths statewide on Thursday and has been responsible for nearly three in four deaths since the start of the pandemic, although it accounts for just under 60% of the state’s population.
In the Bay Area, 51 deaths have been reported between its localities, including 19 in Contra Costa and 18 in Santa Clara counties. Alameda County also added six deaths and San Francisco reported four. During the pandemic, the region has been responsible for about one in nine deaths in California, while being home to about one in five Californians.
There are fewer deaths everywhere than at the same time last month. In a month’s time, California’s death toll is expected to have increased by less than 4,000, according to state models, reaching nearly 55,000 by March 20.
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