As California’s COVID-19 numbers begin to plateau, Los Angeles County drops mask plan
California’s coronavirus numbers continue to show signs of plateauing or slight improvement, after contagious subvariants of omicron led infection and hospital numbers on a steady climb for more than three months.
The statewide daily case rate dipped to 42.1 per 100,000 residents, the California Department of Public Health reported Friday, down 9% compared to one week earlier.
California’s positivity rate was measured at 15.8%, the same as one week earlier. Positivity peaked during the current surge at 16.3% in mid-July.
Transmission numbers remain highest in the San Joaquin Valley, rural Northern California and parts of Southern California. San Benito, Merced, Riverside, Tuolumne, Mariposa, Fresno, Stanislaus, Siskiyou and San Bernardino counties ranged from 18% to 23% positivity, according to the latest state health data.
CDPH on Friday reported 4,672 virus patients in hospital beds statewide, including 546 in intensive care units. California has fluctuated slightly but hovered near 4,800 patients since July 19.
The state’s omicron surge in January peaked at more than 15,000 concurrent virus patients in hospital beds with about 2,600 in ICUs.
Deaths, a lagging indicator, have climbed as the current surge drags on. CDPH on Friday reported the last seven-day average for fatalities at 30.
That is the state’s highest death rate since late March, and triple the rate of 10 per day recorded for the first week of May, but well below the 270 per day who were dying at the height of California’s omicron surge earlier this year.
State health officials have now confirmed 92,763 deaths from COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.
California is also on the brink of another major case milestone: CDPH on Friday reported 9.92 million total lab-confirmed cases to date.
Two Sacramento-area counties drop to CDC’s medium level
After 50 of California’s 58 counties found themselves in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “high” community level last week for COVID-19 danger, that total slimmed down to 39 this week.
Among those with their risk levels downgraded were Placer and El Dorado counties in the capital region, each returning to the medium community level for the first time since June 23, due to their case rates dropping below a seven-day total of 200 per 100,000 residents.
Sacramento and Yolo counties remain in the high level, in which both have been classified since June 2.
Both counties were recorded Thursday at about 240 weekly cases per 100,000 residents, CDC data show, though their transmission rates have been declining since early July.
State health data show all four counties with positivity rates below California’s average: Sacramento at 13.4%, Placer at 12.9%, El Dorado at 12.5% and Yolo at 10.6%.
Los Angeles County reverses course on COVID masking
The CDC on Thursday classified Los Angeles County in the “high” community level for COVID-19 danger for the third straight week, but local health officials dropped their plan to restore an indoor mask mandate for the county of 10 million people.
The classification would have activated criteria the local health office had previously established for returning to an indoor mask order.
But the county’s public health director, Barbara Ferrer, on Thursday afternoon reversed course, saying no mandate was necessary because hospitalizations in the nation’s most populous county appear to be stabilizing and virus cases declining.
CDC data showed the rate of hospital admissions with COVID-19 in Los Angeles County at 11 per 100,000 for the week ending July 14, 11.7 as of July 21 and 10.8 in Thursday’s update. The county’s weekly case rate grew from 370 per 100,000 to 481, then fell to 426, over those three weeks.
Ferrer in a news briefing said the latest trends suggest Los Angeles will likely return to the CDC’s medium level next week, another reason for holding off on a new mask order.
Amid the current virus surge, only Alameda County has returned to an indoor mask mandate, doing so briefly in June.
Health officials in the Sacramento area and elsewhere in the state have said they do not plan to return to an indoor mask order unless hospitals become at risk of being overwhelmed by virus patients.
Sacramento-area numbers by county
Sacramento County’s latest case rate is 32.4 per 100,000 residents, state health officials said in Friday’s update, a 4% decrease from one week earlier.
Hospitals in Sacramento County were treating 201 virus patients Thursday, state data showed, down from 223 one week earlier. The intensive care unit decreased to 33 from 34.
▪ Placer County’s latest case rate is 20.1 per 100,000 residents, a 19% decrease from one week earlier.
Hospitals in Placer County were treating 93 virus patients Thursday, up from 86 one week earlier. The ICU total remained at nine.
▪ Yolo County’s latest case rate is 24.3 per 100,000 residents, a 12% decrease from one week earlier.
Hospitals in Yolo County were treating five virus patients Thursday, down from eight a week earlier. The ICU total to one from three.
▪ El Dorado County’s latest case rate is 18.1 per 100,000 residents, a 29% decrease from one week earlier.
Hospitals in El Dorado County were treating seven virus patients Thursday, the same as one week earlier. The ICU total also held at one.
▪ Sutter County’s latest case rate is 30.4 per 100,000 residents, down 18% compared to last week, and Yuba County’s is 38.4, up 5%, state health officials reported Friday.
The only hospital in Yuba County, which serves the Yuba-Sutter bicounty area, was treating seven virus patients Thursday, down from 13 a week earlier. The ICU total increased to one from zero.
This story was originally published July 29, 2022 at 10:14 AM with the headline "As California’s COVID-19 numbers begin to plateau, Los Angeles County drops mask plan."
