The state with the smallest COVID-19 case rate in the U.S. this summer has been California, but especially in the Bay Area, statistics show staying out of doctors’ offices is far easier. California remains the only US state with a substantial number of cases of community transmission of the coronavirus, as indicated by case rates and positive tests, as it has been since last week, with the rest of the country at the high end of the scale.
“The Bay Area is the golden child of COVID mitigation,” Chin-Hong said. “Our people are public health savvy. They align politics with science given our history of the AIDS epidemic, our vaccination rates are the highest in the country including adolescents, and we have made deep inroads into vulnerable populations so that all groups have high testing and vaccination rates in general,” explained disease expert Peter Chin-Hong.
The Bay Area is fortunate to have a relatively low CDC prevalence rate, which results in the majority of the population. Three Bay Area counties have reported higher rates of the disease than the state average for the first time since 2006, according to a report issued Wednesday by the California Department of Public Health. The three states are San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara. According to state data, the Bay Area’s 7-day average daily case rate per 100,000 was 13, compared to California’s case rate of 22.
Despite the general downward trend in cases in California, some counties have had a slow but gradual increase in positive test rates. Unless there is a sudden turn in the economy, Chin-Hong said he anticipates a continuing general decline in case rates over the next few weeks.
