See how COVID-19 ranks against other leading causes of death in California
COVID-19 killed about 330 Californians last week, which would make it the state’s third-leading cause of death during a typical week in April.
Fewer Californians have died from COVID-19 than in several other smaller states, but the toll has still been significant. Only heart disease (1,202 deaths per week, on average, in April of 2016, 2017 and 2018) and cancer (1,130 deaths per week) would typically claim more lives than COVID-19 did last week, CDC data show.
The numbers come with a significant caveat. COVID-19 is still in its early stages. Some models predict that the number of COVID-19 deaths in California is about to peak — at least for now — before dropping.
The total number of COVID-19 deaths in California so far — 651 as of Sunday — would need to increase at least eight-fold over the course of 2020 for it to likely rank among the state’s 10 leading causes of death for the entire year.
All that said, even if no one else dies from COVID-19 in California, the disease would still have killed almost as many people in California in about a month as the flu has since September, preliminary state data show.
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