California’s steady decline of coronavirus cases continued through the weekend, giving residents a glimmer of hope that the state is slowly on its way back to a semblance of normal life after being one of the worst stricken regions in the United States.
New data showed there were 24,111 reported new COVID-19 cases in California counties on Saturday. After the post-holiday surge in the state that caused record-breaking numbers, there were 620 fewer cases than the previous day.
From 29,122 new daily cases, the state recorded a seven-day average that dropped to 27,405 patients, which was the lowest average number of cases since December 11.
Road to Recovery
Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, California has recorded 3.1 million infections. The Golden State experienced one of the country’s most dramatic surges in November despite its early success in controlling the spread of the virus.
For the first time since Christmas Day, the number of patients diagnosed with COVID-19 has also decreased, dropping below 19,000 on Thursday. And hospitals received 552 fewer patients than the total of 19,537 on Wednesday.
The total number of individuals reported with the coronavirus in intensive care units was 4,527 as of Thursday, which was also marginally lower compared to Wednesday’s total by 89 patients. California had 2,348 patients hospitalized, 660 of which were on ICU beds with COVID-19, on October 20, before the winter surge.
The state’s daily average deaths dropped below 500 for the first time since January 18, recording only 458 fatalities. Across California, there have been 36,793 COVID-19-related deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.
The positive case figure comes despite concerns about how officials are handling the distribution of the coronavirus vaccines in California. The Department of Public Health said that the state had administered 2,191,111 COVID-19 vaccines as of Friday.
On Saturday, state officials said they delivered 4,135,625 COVID-19 vaccine shots to health care systems with facilities and local officials in several counties, which include the first and second doses for patients. State officials said the numbers did not reflect the actual daily changes as there may be a delay in the reports.
Distribution of Vaccine
An analysis by Bloomberg found that California had the slowest distribution of the coronavirus vaccine in the country based on the number of doses distributed to each state.
On Saturday, Contra Costa County the highest number of new cases in the Bay Area with a total of 276 new infections with three fatalities. In Alameda County, officials recorded 114 new infections and 31 deaths. On Thursday, the East Bay County said it observed 54 deaths, and on Friday, an additional 13. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Alameda County recorded a total of 886 coronavirus-related deaths, Mercury News reported.
The data also showed that San Francisco recorded 111 new COVID-19 cases and three fatalities. On the other hand, Sonoma County observed 190 new infections but zero fatalities. Over the weekend, there were six Bay Area counties that did not have updated coronavirus data showing their caseloads and fatalities.
The majority of California’s new cases on Saturday were from Los Angeles County, with a total of 10,085 new infections. Meanwhile, San Diego County officials said they recorded 2,980 new cases while Orange County and San Bernardino had 2,752 and 1,659 new cases, respectively.
On Friday, Riverside did not update its data of how many new cases or deaths it recorded, despite having the second-highest total of infections in the region.
Having an increase of 15 deaths to a new total of 268, Los Angeles County recorded the most number of fatalities due to the coronavirus. Compared to Friday, Orange County and San Diego County recorded 78 and 43 coronavirus-related deaths, a drop of 54%.
