COVID-19 still kills in California, but the demographics of its victims are shifting
As California settles into a third year of pandemic, COVID-19 continues to pose a serious threat of death. But the number of people dying — and the demographics of those falling victim — has shifted notably from the first two years.
Given the collective immunity, people have garnered through a combination of mass vaccination and protections built from earlier infections, Californians overall were far less likely to die from COVID-19 in 2022, when the omicron variant dominated, than during the first two years of the pandemic, when other variants were largely at play, amplifying a national trend.
Still, each week, the virus is killing hundreds of Californians, hitting hardest among the unvaccinated. The virus remained among the state’s leading causes of death in July, trailing heart disease, cancer, stroke, and Alzheimer’s disease but outpacing diabetes, accidental death, and a host of other debilitating diseases. In the first seven months of the year, about 13,500 California residents died of COVID-19, according to preliminary death certificate data from the state Department of Public Health. By comparison, the virus killed about 31,400 people in 2020 and almost 44,000 in 2021.
From April 2020 through December 2021, COVID-19 killed an average of 3,600 people a month, making it the third-leading cause of death in the state cumulatively for that time period, behind heart disease and cancer. From December 2020 through February 2021, it briefly overtook heart disease as the leading cause of death, taking the lives of more than 38,300 Californians in just three months. During its most recent peak, in January 2022, COVID-19 took about 5,900 lives.
COVID-19 fell out of the top 10 causes of death for a brief period in the spring only to reenter this summer as the omicron variant continued to mutate. In July, even with more than 70% of Californians fully vaccinated, COVID-19 was the fifth-leading cause of death, cutting short more than 1,000 lives, state data show.
Clearly, vaccinations made a difference. COVID-19 death rates fell in recent months as COVID-19 shots and prior infections afforded much of the population significant protection against severe illness, said Dr. Timothy Brewer, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at UCLA. Brewer said the omicron variant, while more transmissible than earlier strains, appears to be a milder version of the virus.
Research into that question is ongoing, but preliminary data suggests omicron is less likely to cause serious disease and death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which also notes that the severity of symptoms can be affected by vaccination status, age, and other health conditions.
The decline in deaths was particularly striking among California’s Latino population.
In 2020 and 2021, Latino residents accounted for 47% of COVID-19 deaths in California — about 35,400 deaths — although they make up 40% of the state’s population. By comparison, Latinos accounted for 34% of COVID-19 deaths from January through July 2022, according to state data. That translates to about 4,600 deaths.
Conversely, the proportion of COVID-19 deaths involving white residents increased from 32% in the first two years of the pandemic to 44% in the first seven months of 2022. That equates to 24,400 deaths involving white residents in 2020-21 and about 6,000 deaths in the first seven months of 2022. White people make up about 35% of the state’s population.
Researchers point to several factors in the shift. During the first two years of the pandemic, large numbers of the workers deemed essential, who continued to report to job sites in person, were Latino, while white residents were more likely to be employed in occupations that allowed them to work from home, U.S. Census Bureau surveys show.
“They just got exposed more,” said Dr. George Rutherford, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California-San Francisco. “They’re doing essential jobs and had to leave the house and go to work.”
An imbalance in remote work remains, census data shows, but today the large majority of both Latino and white workers in California are reporting to work in person.
Seciah Aquino, deputy director of the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California, said efforts to make sure that testing, treatment, and vaccinations were available to underserved communities of color also had an impact. And because Latino communities were hit so hard during the pandemic, she said, many California Latinos are still wearing masks. “They are still making sure that they’re staying home if they’re sick,” she said. “They’re still abiding by those policies even if the greater narrative is changing.”
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