California will fully reopen its economy next Tuesday under remarkably favorable conditions, with the COVID-19 risk rapidly receding and new cases being reported at the lowest levels in 14 months.

The state has for several months recorded one of the lowest coronavirus infection rates in the country, a distinction that’s endured despite the end of many restrictions and the rise of new variants. The numbers and rapid rollout of vaccinations have given public health officials even more confidence that life can return to some semblance of normal without the horrific surges that thwarted California’s two previous attempts at reopening.

California has one of the highest rates of vaccinations in the nation, with 56% of residents of all ages — and 71% of adults — having received at least one dose of vaccine. Thirteen states now have at least 70% of their adults at least partially vaccinated, achieving a goal set by President Biden weeks before a July Fourth target.

That rollout of vaccines, especially in California’s most populous areas, have helped tame COVID-19 and tamped down transmission. Also a factor, especially in Los Angeles County, is the lingering immunity of many people who survived COVID-19 during the devastating surges in the last 15 months.

At its peak in January, the state was reporting 45,000 coronavirus cases a day. Now, California is reporting an average of fewer than 1,000 new coronavirus per day over the most recent seven-day period, according to data compiled by The Times.

The last time case counts were this low was March 31, 2020 — when the pandemic was just beginning to roar to life and testing was so limited that many infections likely went undetected.

That isn’t the case this time around. California’s latest seven-day average of 990 new coronavirus cases per day comes even as roughly 129,000 tests were conducted daily over that same period, Times’ data show. In the late spring of 2020, the earliest time that reliable data were available, there were only about 50,000 tests conducted daily.

COVID-19 hospitalizations are now at the lowest levels since California began systematically tracking that statistic on March 30, 2020, when 1,617 people with COVID-19 were in hospitals. As of Wednesday, there were 1,001 people with COVID-19 in California’s hospitals, the most recent data available; that’s down 95% from the peak of nearly 22,000 hospitalized in early January.

An average of 32 COVID-19 deaths over the past week is now being reported daily, the lowest such number since April 4, 2020. At its peak, California was reporting 549 COVID-19 deaths a day over a weekly period.

“Right now, California is doing very well with respect to COVID,” Dr. Tomás Aragón, state public health officer and director of the California Department of Public Health, said this week.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-11/covid-19-case-counts-now-lowest-since-april-2020