It was a traditional spring Tuesday, sunny and warm and slightly foggy on the coast. But as April 2, 2024, got here to an in depth, a quiet victory was in sight: The day passed with no single Californian dying of COVID.
While death certificates were filed and processed over the following few weeks, this was the primary day without an official COVID death since March 18, 2020, the day before Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a statewide curfew.
“This is a very special day,” said Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at UCSF whose passion for working with HIV patients brought her to the Bay Area at the peak of the AIDS epidemic.
It reminded her of one other time a long time ago when the Bay Area Reporter declared that there have been “no obituaries” to run for HIV victims First time in 17 years. “It was just a beautiful, significant day for us in history.”
Like an obituary section with no HIV deaths, a day without COVID deaths is merely a symbolic moment within the rollercoaster timeline of a pandemic, statistically prone to occur once average each day deaths are low enough, but notable nonetheless.
The deadly virus had already crept into the Golden State by the point it was causing deaths day by day in late March 2020. The highly contagious disease spread like wildfire amongst California's most vulnerable populations – the immunocompromised, the frail and the elderly. The hospitals were full. Schools and offices closed. Masks became a obligatory fashion accessory.
For 1,476 days, the variety of deaths brought on by the virus rose steadily, sometimes with large jumps in a single day. All told, the virus has killed over 107,000 Californians to date.
Today, after 4 years, the virus is more manageable. The state's average variety of each day COVID deaths has fallen from a high of just over 30 in early January throughout the winter surge to about 14 in early March. By April, the typical variety of each day deaths fell to 4, the bottom level for the reason that virus began to spread.
The change is dramatic. On January 12, 2021 – the deadliest day in California – 718 COVID deaths were reported. That's comparable to the state's average variety of deaths from all causes per day in 2024 – between 750 and 900.
Although the course of the pandemic has brought the brand new coronavirus closer to the flu when it comes to spread and lethality, it shouldn’t be there yet.
The deadliest day of this 12 months's flu season was Jan. 3, 2024, when 19 people died across the state, in keeping with their death certificates. This winter, the deadliest day for COVID was January 19, 2024, when 38 people died from the virus.
The seasonality of the flu implies that California often goes several days in a row with no single flu death throughout the off-season, like now. Many expect that COVID will proceed to be less deadly, although its year-round presence makes it a special threat than the flu with its more pronounced seasonal pattern.
As for the long run? Expect more days without COVID deaths, but there can even inevitably be increases. A brand new family of sub-variants called FLiRT is raising concerns as current vaccination rates are low and immunity is lagging.
“All the information we have now says there is no difference in virulence,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health. He noted that while the severity has not modified, the transmissibility of those recent variants appears to have increased.
Schwartzberg said an updated vaccine is within the works. Fortunately, he said, the worst is nearly actually behind us.
“I don’t think we’ll see anything like the last four years,” Schwartzberg said.
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