California has become the first US state to record more than five million known COVID-19 infections.
As reported on Tuesday by the California Department of Public Health, the grim milestone wasn’t entirely unexpected in a state with 40 million residents poised for the surge in new infections amid holiday parties and family gatherings forced indoors by a series of winter storms.
The first cases in California were seen on January 25, 2020. It took 292 days to get to one million infections on November 11 of that following year and 44 days from then to the top two million.
California’s caseload is also ahead of the other large states. Texas had more than 4.4 million, and Florida hit 3.9 million as of Sunday.
California has recorded more than 75,500 death cases related to COVID-19
The state has fared better than many other states dealing with surges, with areas in the Midwest and Northeast seeing the most significant jump in cases and hospitalizations amid frigid temperatures that have kept people indoors.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention list California as a place with high transmission of the virus, along with nearly everywhere else in the country. But in the last week, California averaged 16.4 new cases per 100,000 people, less than a third of the national rate.
Meanwhile, corona virus-related hospitalizations have been rising slowly in California, up about 12 percent in the past week of 4401, which is less than half as during the late summer peak and one-fifth of a year ago, before vaccines were widely available.
On Tuesday, San Francisco announced it was canceling its New Year’s Eve fireworks show because of the rising caseload.
The timeline of COVID-19 in America often comes back in California, and it had some of the earliest known cases among travelers from China, where the outbreak began.
On March 19, 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom issued the nation’s first statewide stay-at-home order, shuttering many businesses and schools to prevent hospital overcrowding.
It is unclear how many newly reported cases were attributed to the omicron variant. Much about omicron remains unknown, including whether it causes more or less severe illness.
