It took three years and an infinite quantity of heartache and upheaval for the Golden State to surpass a grim milestone this month: Greater than 100,000 Californians have died from COVID-19.
Contemplate if the mixed populations of Los Gatos, Menlo Park and Nice Hill disappeared within the span of three years.
Whereas it’s unclear the place or precisely when the virus claimed its 100,000th sufferer in California in current weeks, the quantity turned official on Thursday with the latest release of data we’ve develop into intimate with because the pandemic started:
Complete COVID instances: 11,105,535.
Complete deaths: 100,187.
The somber reminder of the virus’ lethal influence comes as California prepares to close the book on its pandemic state of emergency, although COVID continues to be liable for the deaths of about 150 Californians every week. However three years into the pandemic, robust therapeutics, our immunity from earlier infections and the facility of vaccines that blunt extreme sickness have reduce the demise toll from its peak of about 600 a day in January 2021.
The nation’s most populous state is the primary to cross the 100K mark in COVID deaths, however it’s removed from struggling the stain of the USA’ highest demise fee. Thirty-nine states had greater charges than the Golden State, which benefited from aggressive public health mandates and high vaccination rates.
If the U.S. had California’s demise fee, about 282,000 fewer folks would have died.
However even right here, these deaths, and the ensuing grieving, have been concentrated in some counties and areas, whereas others have been virtually spared.
California’s tiniest county, Alpine, with simply over 1,000 residents, has but to document any official COVID deaths — however that doesn’t inform the entire story. Nestled within the Sierra Nevada mountains simply south of Lake Tahoe, Alpine has no well being care amenities. So not less than two Alpine residents who died of COVID have been recorded as Nevada deaths as a result of they died in a hospital throughout the state line, stated the county’s Public Well being Officer Richard Johnson.
Different rural counties have been overcome by COVID deaths. On the southern fringe of the state in Imperial County, on the border with Mexico, the demise fee from the virus is greater than double the statewide fee, and 4 occasions greater than the Bay Space’s.
“That’s been the theme of the pandemic,” stated Dr. John Swartzberg, scientific professor emeritus of infectious illnesses and vaccinology at UC Berkeley’s College of Public Well being. “The Bay Space’s carried out higher than California. California’s carried out higher the USA.”
With a number of the state’s most far-reaching mandates and a public that largely adopted alongside, every of the Bay Space counties has fared higher than the state as an entire, which has seen about 250 COVID deaths per 100,000 residents over the previous three years. San Mateo County has the bottom demise fee within the area, with simply 96 deaths per 100,000. The best is in Santa Clara County at 137, nonetheless properly beneath the state common.
The nation’s demise fee is round 350, in response to information from the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention.
Altogether, the six-county Bay Space’s complete demise fee is 128, simply over one third the speed in Los Angeles, the state’s most populous county, which has recorded 35,000 COVID deaths. Los Angeles County has the fourth-highest COVID demise fee of any California county at this level within the pandemic.
As California strikes ahead, it’s usually tough to place into perspective the devastation that COVID has wrought in three years. Most cancers, for instance, is liable for the deaths of about 50,000 Californians yearly. Alzheimer’s illness kills about 16,000.
“The nationwide flu mortality fee is about 10 deaths per (100,000 residents) per yr, and a extreme flu season is about 15,” Dr. Erica Pan, the California State Epidemiologist and director of the California Division of Public Well being’s Middle of Infectious Illness, stated at a public discussion board earlier this month. “You possibly can see how dramatically greater COVID-19 is.”
Swartzberg remembers early within the pandemic when estimates of COVID’s lethality diversified wildly.
“Folks have been questioning whether or not the demise fee was 3 p.c,” he stated of estimates early within the pandemic as scenes of refrigerated vans exterior New York Metropolis hospitals turned widespread. The demise fee has now settled at slightly below 1 p.c.
However disparities in well being — weight problems, diabetes, power lung illness, entry to well being care amongst others — are a significant factor in why some areas of the state, comparable to Imperial County, have been hit more durable than areas such because the Bay Space, Swartzberg stated.
Because the state dials down its pandemic focus, some consultants consider that pattern will proceed.
