last summer\u2019s peak<\/a>. <\/p>\nThe latest COVID hospital admission rate was 3.9 hospitalizations for every 100,000 residents. That\u2019s a slight decline from 4.14 the prior week. Overall, COVID hospitalizations remain low statewide, particularly compared with earlier surges. <\/p>\n
The number of newly admitted COVID hospital patients has declined slightly in Los Angeles County and Santa Clara County, but ticked up slightly up in Orange County. In San Francisco, some doctors believe the summer COVID wave is cresting. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a few more people in the hospitals, but I think it\u2019s less than last summer,\u201d said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a UC San Francisco infectious diseases expert. \u201cI feel like we are at a plateau.\u201d <\/p>\n
Those who are being hospitalized tend to be older people who didn\u2019t get immunized against COVID within the last year, Chin-Hong said, and some have a secondary infection known as superimposed bacterial pneumonia.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles County<\/p>\n
In L.A. County, there are hints that COVID activity is either peaking or starting to decline. Viral levels in local wastewater are still rising, but the test positivity rate is declining. <\/p>\n
For the week that ended Sept. 6, 12.2% of wastewater samples tested for COVID in the county were positive, down from 15.9% the prior week. <\/p>\n
\u201cMany indicators of COVID-19 activity in L.A. County declined in this week\u2019s data,\u201d the L.A. County Department of Public Health told The Times on Friday. \u201cWhile it\u2019s too early to know if we have passed the summer peak of COVID-19 activity this season, this suggests community transmission is slowing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Orange County<\/p>\n
In Orange County, \u201cwe appear to be in the middle of a wave right now,\u201d said Dr. Christopher Zimmerman, deputy medical director of the county\u2019s Communicable Disease Control Division. <\/p>\n
The test positivity rate has plateaued in recent weeks \u2014 it was 15.3% for the week that ended Sept. 6, up from 12.9% the prior week, but down from 17.9% the week before that. <\/p>\n
COVID is still prompting people to seek urgent medical care, however. Countywide, 2.9% of emergency room visits were for COVID-like illness for the week that ended Sept. 6, the highest level this year, and up from 2.6% for the week that ended Aug. 30.<\/p>\n
San Diego County<\/p>\n
For the week that ended Sept. 6, 14.1% of coronavirus lab tests in San Diego County were positive for infection. That\u2019s down from 15.5% the prior week, and 16.1% for the week that ended Aug. 23. <\/p>\n
Ventura County<\/p>\n
COVID is also still sending people to the emergency room in Ventura County. Countywide, 1.73% of ER patients for the week that ended Sept. 12 were there to seek treatment for COVID, up from 1.46% the prior week. <\/p>\n
San Francisco<\/p>\n
In San Francisco, the test positivity rate was 7.5% for the week that ended Sept. 7, down from 8.4% for the week that ended Aug. 31.<\/p>\n
\u201cCOVID-19 activity in San Francisco remains elevated, but not as high as the previous summer\u2019s peaks,\u201d the local Department of Public Health said. <\/p>\n
Silicon Valley<\/p>\n
In Santa Clara County, the coronavirus remains at a \u201chigh\u201d level in the sewershed of San Jos\u00e9 and Palo Alto. <\/p>\n
Roughly 1.3% of ER visits for the week that ended Sunday were attributed to COVID in Santa Clara County, down from the prior week\u2019s figure of 2%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are some encouraging signs that California\u2019s summer COVID wave might be leveling off. That\u2019s not to say…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":232975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[51839,276,7823,125462,101817,125464,210,8055,56496,2503,2750,15182,72010,125463,67,132,68,40598,2452],"class_list":{"0":"post-232974","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-aug","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-covid","11":"tag-covid-wave","12":"tag-covid-19-activity","13":"tag-emergency-room-visit","14":"tag-health","15":"tag-l-a-county","16":"tag-old-people","17":"tag-peak","18":"tag-san-francisco","19":"tag-santa-clara-county","20":"tag-sept","21":"tag-test-positivity-rate","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-wastewater","26":"tag-week"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115217805072177909","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}