How Success Against the Coronavirus Turned to Crisis in California

For most of the spring, California was a coronavirus success story. Now, just weeks after it began to reopen, new cases of Covid-19 are exploding across America’s most populous state, and public officials are quickly retrenching.

On Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a slew of new restrictions, including the mandatory closure of many bars and indoor restaurants, an effective admission that, after proceeding slower than other states in the early months of the outbreak, California reopened too quickly.

Nearly 6,000 people tested positive for the new coronavirus in California Tuesday, and more than 7,000 on Monday, the highest total during the pandemic and a 45% increase over the previous week. Hospitalizations are up more than 50% from two weeks ago. The percentage of tests coming back positive was 6% on Tuesday, up more than a full percentage point from two weeks earlier.

Los Angeles County, home to 10 million of the state’s 40 million people, recorded nearly 2,800 new infections Tuesday and a record 2,903 on Monday. Sacramento County was almost out of open ICU beds Wednesday. In Imperial County, in the southeast of the state, patients are being transferred elsewhere because the local health system is overloaded.