More than 80% of eligible Californians have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, a milestone Gov. Gavin Newsom characterized as a “momentous occasion” that nevertheless underscores that more needs to be done to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

The level of vaccination coverage among California residents age 12 and older ranks ninth out of all states, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

California’s 80.6% partial inoculation rate outpaces those of Pennsylvania, at 80%; New York, 78%; Florida, 73.1%; and Texas, 68.6%, federal figures show.

States with higher rates than California are mostly in New England, as well as Hawaii and New Mexico.

“Thank you to the people in the state of California for being mindful that this pandemic is not behind us, that as we battle this Delta variant, this mutation ... we still have work to do,” Newsom said during a briefing Tuesday.

For starters, the share of eligible Californians who are fully vaccinated — meaning they’ve received the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine or two doses of either Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna — is smaller, at about 65%.

And some populations are less vaccinated than others. Only about half of Black and Latino Californians are at least partially vaccinated, compared with 61% of white residents, 63% of Native Americans and 75% of Asian or Pacific Islander residents, according to data compiled by The Times. (These numbers are an undercount, as the race of 15.3% of people who have been vaccinated is unknown.)

There are also wide geographic disparities. Eleven of California’s 58 counties have at least partially vaccinated more than 70% of their residents, but 16 other counties have seen less than half of their residents roll up their sleeves.

Counties in the Bay Area have California’s highest vaccination rates. Both San Francisco and Santa Clara, the Bay Area’s most populous counties, are reporting that 87% of people age 12 and up have received at least one dose, while in Alameda County, 88% have received at least one dose.

Los Angeles County lags behind the statewide vaccination rate. In L.A. County, 74% of residents age 12 and older have received at least one dose.

Weekly COVID-19 vaccinations statewide are up 53% from a low point in mid-July. During the seven-day period that ended Saturday, at least 627,000 doses were administered, compared with about 411,000 during the week that ended July 9.

Newsom said that despite the progress, the state is working on “more culturally competent outreach to meet people, quite literally, where they are.”

He said California’s leaders are also “doing more to try to do better, including in our rural parts and remote parts of the state, where we still have a substantial amount of population that need to get these lifesaving vaccines.”

Meanwhile, the latest coronavirus surge may be starting to level off.

Over the seven-day period that ended Tuesday morning, California reported an average of 12,861 new coronavirus cases per day, according to data compiled by The Times. That’s a decrease of roughly 11% from the previous week.

The caseload, however, is still high. On June 15, when California reopened its economy and lifted virtually all pandemic-related restrictions on businesses and public spaces, the state was recording fewer than 900 cases per day.

Public health officials say another metric, the test positivity rate, which reflects how many tests result in confirmed coronavirus infections, is a more telling measure. Although the raw number of cases fluctuates depending on how much testing is occurring — and testing has ramped up dramatically since California schools opened for the new term — a stable or declining positivity rate can illustrate a slowdown in transmissions.

California’s positivity rate is falling. As of Tuesday, the seven-day positivity rate was 4.6%, down from 5.8% two weeks ago. By contrast, the second-most-populous state, Texas, has a positivity rate of 16%, according to Johns Hopkins University.

“I don’t think it’s any surprise that we have among the lowest positivity rates in America, as we have the highest vaccination rates in America,” Newsom said, although he emphasized the need to increase vaccinations among populations with lower rates, such as Black and Latino Californians.

With the high caseloads, hospitals remain under stress. Still, COVID-19 hospitalizations have plateaued recently.

On Monday, there were 8,342 COVID-19 patients in hospitals statewide. That’s up just 1% from the previous week — a dramatic improvement from the increase of 11% the week before.

California’s intensive care units, however, are still seeing a modest increase in COVID-19 patients, Newsom said. On Monday, 2,128 COVID-19 patients statewide were receiving that level of specialized medical attention, a number not seen since mid-February.

Although state figures show that roughly 1,700 ICU beds remain available, those are not distributed evenly throughout California. Remote, rural areas might have access to only a handful of ICU beds to begin with, and every one that’s filled by a COVID-19 patient is one less that’s available for someone suffering a heart attack, injury or other serious condition.

In August, nine Northern California counties had more patients hospitalized with COVID-19 than at any other point in the pandemic: Amador, Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Mendocino, Placer, Plumas, Shasta and Tuolumne.

“This has been our worst fear,” state Sen. Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg), who represents seven counties stretching from Marin to Del Norte, previously told The Times. “We saw significant surges in urban areas in this state early on. Now, rural California is the epicenter for this pandemic.”

A group of doctors in Mendocino County, in an open letter, pleaded for people to get vaccinated.

“Never before have we seen such a surge of sick, young patients with COVID-19, and never before has our medical system faced such a challenge. We can all do our part in this dire situation by getting vaccinated,” the doctors wrote.

“Our emergency departments are overflowing. Our hospitals are full. Our ICUs are full. We struggle to find hospital beds even for the patients who are coming to the emergency department with strokes, heart attacks or appendicitis,” they wrote.

In an indication of the serious nature of the coronavirus infections that are resulting in hospitalizations, fatalities from COVID-19 have risen sharply recently. Over the seven-day period that ended Tuesday morning, an average of 89 people statewide died of COVID-19 each day — roughly twice as many as two weeks ago.

The pandemic has now killed more than 65,200 Californians.

Times staff writer Hailey Branson-Potts contributed to this report.