Monday: A Times reporter who spent days inside Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital at the height of the surge discusses what we should learn.

By Jill Cowan and Sheri Fink

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Good morning.

In the Golden State, the average number of new Covid-19 cases per day over the past week dipped to 6,641 — not the lowest they’ve been, but the trajectory is remarkable for the speed with which positivity rates have plummeted, especially compared with the slower flattening of cases after the state’s summer surge.

As The Los Angeles Times reported, California’s declining case numbers can most likely be attributed to a combination of factors including widespread behavioral precautions, vaccinations and, ironically, the huge number of people who have already had the virus.

[Read more about the factors affecting when the United States could reach herd immunity.]

At the same time, the nation is confronting yet another unfathomable milestone: half a million deaths from the coronavirus, a mere month after the United States passed 400,000.

Leaders continue to urge caution, as dangerous coronavirus variants gain footholds.

And as the vaccine rollout continues, experts have said that losing sight of the inequities that helped propel California’s winter crisis could shape our recovery; already, early data suggests white Californians are getting vaccinated more quickly than groups that have been hit harder by the virus.

Those inequities were on full display at Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital, as my colleague Sheri Fink recently reported in this harrowing look at the heart of Los Angeles’s surge, when hospitals were overwhelmed and hundreds died.

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