SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California’s COVID-19 numbers are showing early signs of improvement, after the state’s case and hospital rates climbed steadily from early April through mid-July, though some regions of the state are faring better than others.
The California Department of Public Health in an update Tuesday reported the latest coronavirus case rate at 44.5 per 100,000 residents, a 10% decrease in the past week.
And for the first time since the subsiding of the original omicron surge in January, California’s test positivity rate also fell by a notable margin, though it remains high in absolute terms. CDPH on Tuesday reported positivity at 15%, down from 16.2% one week earlier.
Positivity remains higher than the state average across many Southern California, San Joaquin Valley and rural Northern California counties. Merced, Tuolumne, Riverside and Plumas, all recorded positivity at about 20%; Fresno, Kings and Stanislaus at 19%; Madera, Yuba, San Bernardino and Modoc at 18%; and Del Norte, Orange, Trinity, San Benito at 16%.
Most of California’s lowest positivity figures are now in the Sacramento region and the Bay Area. CDPH recorded Sacramento County at 13.2% positivity, El Dorado and Placer at 11.9% and Yolo County at 9.5%. Every greater Bay Area county except Lake County (16.4%) came in under 15%, with most ranging from 11% to 14%.
Los Angeles County, which appears to be heading for a temporary return to an indoor mask order by the end of this week barring a more rapid turnaround in case and hospital numbers, had a positivity rate of 13.7%, down by 1.4 percentage points in the past week.
Fifty of California’s 58 counties were classified in Thursday’s weekly update from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the “high” community level for COVID-19 danger. At that level, which is determined based on virus case and hospitalization rates, federal health officials call for masking in indoor public settings.
Health officials in Los Angeles County have planned to reimpose a mask mandate after the county has been in the CDC’s high level for two full weeks. The mask order would then end after the county drops to a lower level for two weeks.
Other counties, including Sacramento and Yolo, have said they would not return to a mask mandate unless hospitals are at risk of being overwhelmed. Yolo health officials recently started an awareness campaign that uses voluntary color-coded signs to inform the public of the current risk level in indoor settings.
Virus hospitalizations continue to climb statewide, but the rate of increase may be plateauing — well below the peak of January’s omicron surge, which saw more than 15,000 COVID-positive patients at one point.
CDPH on Tuesday reported 4,826 virus patients in hospital beds. That’s a 3% increase in the past week, but that is down from a 9% week-to-week increase between two weeks ago and last week.
The COVID-19 death rate is still increasing steadily in California, now reported by CDPH at an average of 28 per day – up 49% in the past month for the state’s highest fatality rate since late March after whittling to as low as 10 per day in early May.
The BA.5 variant made up an estimated 82% of U.S. cases last week, up from 76% a week earlier, according to CDC data updated Tuesday. Its sister variant, BA.4, was responsible for 13% of cases last week, down from 14%.
For the CDC region including California, BA.5 has grown to 85% from 79% two weeks ago. BA.4 declined to 10% from 12%.
The remaining minority of cases, nationwide and in California, are of the previously dominant BA.2 and BA.2.12.1 omicron subvariants.
Experts say BA.5 and BA.4 are very contagious and also better at evading immune protection than earlier variants, making them more likely to reinfect those who recently contracted one of the BA.2 strains.
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