As other regions of the country finally see some relief from the insidious coronavirus, California’s surge has grown so large it now claims a dark distinction in the nation’s outbreak: Without the Golden State, U.S. numbers would be dropping.

That’s according to The COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic, which analyzes data from across the country.

Nationally, more than 18 million people have gotten the coronavirus, and more than 300,000 have died. But former hot spots such as North Dakota, which had been seeing north of 1,000 new cases a day but is now recording just a few hundred, are improving. Things are looking up in nearby South Dakota and Wisconsin, too. But case counts remain stubbornly high across the South, from Arizona in the Southwest to Alabama and Mississippi. However, the worst numbers in recent days have been coming from California, where new case numbers are up 60 percent in the last two weeks and the state on Wednesday recorded its 2 millionth case.

Experts say an even closer look at California’s crushing spike in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations makes it clear that half the state is primarily pushing the latest surge.

According to John Swartzberg, an infectious disease expert and professor emeritus at UC Berkeley, the statewide data masks the fact that Northern California is doing relatively well.

“Yes, California is doing terribly now,” Swartzberg said. “That is primarily Southern California, and because California is such a large state, it does drive the numbers. But I wouldn’t make a lot out of this because this is just the pattern we’ve seen. One area explodes and gets better, and another area explodes and gets better.”

The Bay Area’s ICUs still have close to 10% available capacity compared to zero in the Central Valley and southern part of the state.

The situation is particularly dire in Los Angeles County.

“In most hospitals, about half of all of the beds are filled with COVID patients and half of all the ICU beds are filled with COVID patients, and two thirds of these patients are suffocating due to the inflammation that’s in their lungs that’s caused by the virus,” said Christina Ghaly, director of the county’s Department of Health Services. “They’re suffocating to the point that they can no longer breathe on their own, and they have to have someone put a tube down their throat in order to oxygenate their organs. Many of these people will not live to be in 2021.”

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti this week acknowledged the toll the virus has taken on residents of the state’s most populous city.

“We know that this emergency is our darkest day, maybe the darkest day in our city’s history,” Garcetti said Wednesday.

Yet amid a devastating surge that has stolen loved ones and wreaked havoc on the economy, some potentially encouraging numbers are emerging. In recent days, the Golden State has seen a modest decline in the rate of growth in new cases. In recent days there is some indication that California’s surge may be slowing slightly. The average rate of positive cases among those tested reached a new high of 12.3% over a two-week period, but it was starting to trend down this week.

Swartzberg called the latest data “tantalizing” but warned against getting too optimistic.

“I think that decline may get lost in the fact that the Christmas holidays are going to exacerbate this problem,” he said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom this week also cautioned that it remains too early to tell whether the numbers will hold.

In a video his office tweeted Thursday, Newsom called on residents to remember those who have lost their lives.

“I just want to express on behalf of all Californians our deepest empathy, our deepest sympathy for those families that are struggling through this holiday because of this pandemic,” the governor said.

He also thanked frontline workers, especially those working the holiday away from their own families.

“We see you, you matter, we care,” Newsom said. “There’s nothing more courageous than the work you do every day.”

Despite pleas from the governor and public health officials to stay home, many families are planning to travel or gather with those outside their immediate households during the holidays, which is certain to fuel more cases as happened over Thanksgiving.

The weekend ahead of the Christmas holiday, air travel exceeded 1 million daily passengers nationwide for three straight days, setting a pandemic travel record and blowing past Thanksgiving numbers. In California alone, more than 19,000 people were set to spend Christmas in the hospital, isolated from their families.

It’s also likely to be impossible to tell the true state of the pandemic in California for the next several days, with the Christmas and New Year holidays expected to cause delays in getting the data that public health officials and others rely on to show where and how quickly the deadly virus is spreading.

Still, Swartzberg has seen enough data to suggest what’s coming.

At the earliest, he said, “I just don’t see us out of this conundrum until the second or maybe third week of January.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting.