California has, at least for a day, fallen below a plateau of cases and deaths that began two weeks ago, according to data reported by county health departments and compiled by this news organization.
With 3,573 new cases of COVID-19 and 33 deaths from the virus reported around the state Tuesday, each seven-day average fell to its lowest point in months. The 569 fatalities over the past week, or about 81 per day, are the fewest over any seven-day period since the first week of July, while the average 3,212 new cases per day over the past week are the fewest since June 16.
Since Sept. 15, the seven-day average of cases hadn’t deviated more than 2% from 3,500 per day until Monday, when that figure sank to about 3,380 per day; it fell further Tuesday, to 3,212, or decline of about 11% from two weeks ago. The day preceding those two weeks, Sept. 13, California’s seven-day average had hit a new low at 3,289 cases per day after a two-week decline of 37%. The next day, the seven-day average spiked and did not begin to show any sign of decline for another two weeks.
On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom repeated words of caution from Dr. Mark Ghaly late last week that, despite hospitalizations and the test-positivity rates reaching all-time lows, there were “early signs” the slowdown in cases was “beginning to plateau.”
At the same time, Newsom said he anticipated “a number of counties” moving into new tiers of the state’s color-coded reopening system when Ghaly delivers that announcement this afternoon. He also remarked at the “continuation of the decline … not only in positivity rate but in hospitalizations (and) ICUs.”
Altogether, it made for a mixed bag Monday.
There are “some points of concern and some points of optimism,” Newsom said, and the state’s current outlook is “simply a reminder of what many projected and predicted,” referring to the second wave predicted by many epidemiologists this fall and winter.
However, while California’s decline in cases may have slowed down, there hasn’t been any noticeable increase more than three weeks since Labor Day weekend. In the Bay Area, the number of patients hospitalized has never fallen faster, this weekend reaching its lowest point since late June.
Meanwhile, the state has begun to conduct tests at levels not seen since before an August heat wave that brought high temperatures, wildfires and ensuing poor air quality, forcing some testing sites to close or reduce their hours.
For nearly a month, from the end of August to about two weeks ago, the California Department of Public Health reported no more than 110,000 tests per day, on average. But there have been at least 150,000 tests reported each of the past two days, while the 14-day average number of tests has climbed to about 120,000 per day.
The rate of those tests to come back positive has remained about even since it hit a low of 2.8% last Sunday, averaged over seven days. Over the past week, 2.9% of tests in the state have come back positive, while the 14-day rate was one-tenth of a point lower at 2.8%.
According to Johns Hopkins University, California’s 2.9% positivity rate over the past week is lower than all but 11 states and the District of Columbia.
In San Francisco, the positivity rate is now about even with New York City, which had for months kept the virus at bay with a rate below 1%. On Tuesday, however, New York City reported 3.25% positive tests and a seven-day average of 1.38%, according to media reports, while San Francisco’s average over the past seven days is at 1.25%, according to data compiled by this news organization.
Altogether, the seven-day average of cases in the Bay Area fell to about 500 per day, while the average number of deaths in the region rose to about 12.5 per day over the past week for a total of 87, or about 1 in every 100,000 residents.
There were five deaths reported in the region Monday: two each in Santa Clara and Solano counties, plus one in Marin County.
Riverside County, which doesn’t issue updates over the weekend, reported 17 new fatalities Monday, the most of any jurisdiction in the state (the per-capita rate there over the past week is about 1.7 deaths/100,000 residents, or about 69% higher than the Bay Area). There were six deaths reported in Sacramento County, and no other county reported more than two.
On Monday, the global death toll from COVID-19 crossed 1 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, with more than 33 million known cases worldwide. No country has reported more cases or deaths than the U.S., where more than 7.1 million Americans have been infected and 205,000 have died from the virus.
In California, the cumulative case count was at about 813,000 as of Monday — about 11% of the nationwide total — while the statewide death toll climbed to 15,639, or about 7.6% of the nationwide total. (The state’s 39.5 million people account for about 12% of the U.S. population.)