California on Monday became the first state to record more than 3 million known coronavirus infections.
The grim milestone, as tallied by Johns Hopkins University, wasn’t entirely unexpected in a state with 40 million residents but its speed was stunning. The state only reached 2 million reported cases on Dec. 24.
The first coronavirus case in California was confirmed last Jan. 25. It took 292 days to get to 1 million infections on Nov. 11 and 44 days to top 2 million.
California’s caseload is also far ahead of other large states. Texas had more than 2 million and Florida topped 1.5 million.
The state has recorded more than 33,600 deaths related to COVID-19. There have been 13,937 deaths in Los Angeles County and 520 reported so far in Long Beach—although that figure is likely outdated because Long Beach does not report COVID-19 numbers on weekends or holidays.
The county reported 88 more COVID-19 deaths and 9,927 new infections Monday, noting that the figures could be artificially low due to lags in reporting from the weekend and the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
The number of people hospitalized due to COVID-19 in Los Angeles County continued trending slowly downward today, but officials warn that recent trend could reverse when the full impact of New Year’s Eve gathering transmissions is felt.
While the population of hospitalized COVID patients has slightly decreased, intensive-care units remain packed with virus victims.
According to the state, there were 1,728 COVID patients in ICUs in the county, which has about 2,500 licensed ICU beds.
Health officials have said in recent weeks that about two-thirds of ICU patients in the county are being treated for COVID, leaving little room for people in need of ICU care for other reasons.
A caseload surge that began last fall has strained hospitals and especially intensive care units as a percentage of the infected—typically estimated to be around 12% by public health officials—become sick enough weeks later to need medical care.
On average, California has seen about 500 deaths and 40,000 new cases daily for the past two weeks.
City News Service contributed to this report.