Name: Coronavirus: Hospitalizations show improving situation in California
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Coronavirus: Hospitalizations show improving situation in California

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Even as California experienced its deadliest week of the COVID-19 pandemic, the statewide rate of new cases showed signs of slowing and the number of patients hospitalized with the virus was in the midst of a precipitous drop off.By Saturday, there were 800 fewer patients in hospital beds around the state than there were at its peak on July 21, according to , a decrease of 11.3% in 11 days, to 6,362 patients currently hospitalized as of Saturday, the most recent day for which data was available.Over the weekend, California added another 11,504 new cases and 173 deaths to its totals, including 4,490 positive tests and 32 fatalities Sunday. The 135-per-day average over the past week is the highest California’s death rate has reached since the beginning of the pandemic.While data on new cases and deaths typically lags from reporting delays over the weekend, hospital data has historically not suffered from similar delays. However, since the Department of Health and Human Services established a new, federal database in mid-July, the state has been unable to include updates from a small number of hospitals in its database, which this news organization uses to track statewide hospitalizations.The California Department of Public Health declined to specify how much of the decline in hospitalizations can be attributed to the data switch up, but a spokesperson said “California continues to require hospitals to report the same level of detail they have been providing, and we will continue posting the same data daily.”Los Angeles County has accounted for most of the decline over the past two weeks. There were 426 fewer COVID-19 patients in LA hospitals than at its peak, also on July 21, falling nearly 20% in that time. The 1,784 patients reported on Saturday were fewer than at any point during the month of July and at its lowest mark since June 28.The Bay Area has remained relatively steady through that time. Save for a few single-day spikes, the 782 patients hospitalized Saturday remained about where it was July 21, when the statewide decline started. For a month prior to its late-July peak, the Bay Area had been adding about 120 new hospital patients each week.Even in the San Joaquin Valley, where cases were rising fastest per-capita and active hospitalizations had doubled in just under a month, they had leveled off over the past week. Last Monday, there were 1,297 patients hospitalized across the eight counties, which span from San Joaquin in the north to Kern in the south. By week’s end, the number had fallen to 1,243.Still, that is nearly two-thirds more patients than in the Bay Area, despite about half the population (4.3 million vs. 8 million). It has also recorded more than twice the number of deaths in the past week, 180 to the Bay Area’s 77, and double the number of cases — about 2,000 per day vs. just under 1,000 per day in the Bay Area.By nearly every per-capita measure, the situation in the Central Valley appears the most serious in California.Six of every 1 million Valley residents have died from the virus in the past week, compared to rates of about 1.3 per 1 million in the Bay Area, 4.7 per 1 million in Los Angeles and 3.4 per 1 million statewide. The case rate in the Central Valley has fallen to about 47.5 per 100,000 residents per day after hitting a high of about 54 per 100,000 last week.For comparison, Los Angeles hit a rate of about 36.5 new cases per 100,000 residents at its peak in mid-July, while Florida owned the highest per-capita case rate of any state at about 42 cases per 100,000 over the past week. The per-capita rate in California on Sunday stood at about 21.6 cases per 100,000 residents per day over the past week, lower than 14 other states.California is averaging about as many new cases per day as it was during the second week of July, representing an extended plateau of about 8,500 cases per day. The 57,000 or so reported cases in the state in the past week was about the same as the total in Texas, despite California’s 10 million more residents, and lower than in Florida, despite double the population.The statewide positivity rate, which fell to 7% at the end of last week for the first time since July 1, continued to bend downward and hit 6.4% with Sunday’s test results. Two Bay Area counties — San Francisco and Santa Clara — remained below the World Health Organization-recommended 5% threshold, though Santa Cruz (13.3%), Sonoma (12.4%), Solano (11%) and Contra Costa (11.4%) all had rates higher than 10%.Contra Costa also was responsible for all four deaths reported in the region Sunday. Santa Clara County reported the most cases (305), followed by Contra Costa (160), Sonoma (111) and San Francisco (88).Infectious disease experts said to expect the death curve to trail by three or four weeks, meaning California could be in for many more days of significant death totals, even as new cases level off.The U.S. appeared to be on a similar trajectory as California, with deaths on the rise around the nation, as well. The seven-day average had fallen slightly lower than than 65,000 cases the country had been adding each day for the past two weeks, but the death rate continued to move in the wrong direction.By the end of Sunday, there had been at least 4.6 million cases and 155,000 deaths from COVID-19 in the United States, more than any other country in the world.PrintThanks for reading!Get unlimited access to enjoy this article and moreAlready a subscriber? LoginView more on

Even as California experienced its deadliest week of the COVID-19 pandemic, the statewide rate of new cases showed signs of slowing and the number of patients hospitalized with the virus was in the midst of a precipitous drop off.By Saturday, there were 800 fewer patients in hospital beds around the state than there were at its peak on July 21, according to , a decrease of 11.3% in 11 days, to 6,362 patients currently hospitalized as of Saturday, the most recent day for which data was available.Over the weekend, California added another 11,504 new cases and 173 deaths to its totals,...

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Evan Webeck

Latest Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay Area news from reporters & columnists at The Mercury News.

Coronavirus: Hospitalizations show improving situation in California

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