California reached another bleak coronavirus milestone this week, recording more than 100 deaths daily in the worst death toll since the pandemic began.
But just as troubling, health officials and experts say, is how COVID-19 is harassing certain groups, such as essential workers and those in institutions that include nursing homes and prisons, at much higher rates than those with the ability to stay home.
Californians of color are much more likely to become infected or die from the coronavirus. But the most recent increase in cases is exacerbating those inequalities.
“The epidemic in the West is particularly among the Latinx community. … They are both in urban as well as rural, agricultural areas, “said Dr. George Rutherford, an epidemiologist and infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco.” There is a tremendous amount of transmission in Southern California , particularly in Orange and Los Angeles counties. “
The virus is spreading through the Latino community as essential workers get sick and spread the disease in their communities, Rutherford and others have noted.
The seven-day average for daily coronavirus-related deaths reached 102 on Thursday, the first time the number exceeded 100, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of its county-by-county count of pandemic deaths. Daily death tolls have skyrocketed in recent days, reaching 119 on Tuesday, 158 on Wednesday, a new one-day record, and 153 deaths on Thursday, the second-worst daily death toll.
The largest coronavirus outbreak in Los Angeles County hit the Los Angeles Apparel factory, where more than 300 fell ill and four people died.
Hundreds of farm workers in Ventura County have tested positive for the virus. An outbreak occurred at a housing complex that provides agricultural employers with temporary housing for their workers. In Imperial County, a rural and impoverished region with a predominantly Latino population east of San Diego, hospitals were so overwhelmed that at least 500 COVID-19 patients were transferred out of the county.
And while much was said at the beginning of the pandemic about how dense urban areas like New York City were prepared for disaster, it is now clear that agricultural and rural areas are also suffering, with high rates of coronavirus cases in the entire Central Valley of California, the Salinas Valley and the Imperial Valley, all part of the agricultural heart of the state.
The large outbreaks are also making farmworkers sick in vineyards in Sonoma and Napa counties, some of whom live in Solano county, authorities said.
Of the five California hospitals so overwhelmed that they needed an infusion of United States Air Force medical personnel, four were in the Central Valley, with two hospitals in San Joaquin County and two others in Fresno and Tulare Counties. . The fifth was the Riverside County Eisenhower Medical Center at Rancho Mirage.
Social gatherings are also making the spread worse, public health officials said. Summer parties at UC Berkeley fraternities have been linked to 72 cases, a factor the campus cited to determine that the fall semester would begin with entirely remote instruction.
As the case counts and the number of fatalities continues to rise across the state, health officials are also battling significant resistance to wearing masks in some places. In Huntington Beach, some see the pandemic as a hoax, and much of the public refuses to wear face covers. On Wednesday, there were 690 people with confirmed coronavirus infections in Orange County hospitals, an increase of 157% from two months ago.
Some officials have had to resort to begging their constituents to wear masks.
“Their decision not to participate costs the community a lot. When we see the numbers increase, we will close the deals. And in the end, we all hurt each other together, ”Clayton Chau, director of the Orange County Health Care Agency, told reporters Thursday. “So, I’m pleading, and I hope you all help us plead with the community, that they really, really have to follow this.”
In Los Angeles County, COVID-19 killed 3,402 people through June 2020.
(Los Angeles County Department of Public Health)
COVID-19, the coronavirus disease, is on track to claim more lives in Los Angeles County this year than any other disease except coronary heart disease.
“It is killing more people than Alzheimer’s disease, other types of heart disease, strokes and [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease], ”Barbara Ferrer, Los Angeles County director of public health, said Wednesday.
COVID-19 has already killed nearly three times the number of people in Los Angeles County who died of the flu or pneumonia during the last eight-month flu season. Between October and May, 1,521 people died from the flu and pneumonia; As of Thursday, 4,263 people died from COVID-19 in Los Angeles County.
Of particular concern in the nation’s most populous county is that the racial disparity in coronavirus infections is growing. Latino residents are more than twice as likely to have been diagnosed with the virus as white residents in Los Angeles County; Black residents are 25% more likely to be infected with the virus than white people, Ferrer said.
Latino residents are more than twice as likely to have been diagnosed with the coronavirus as white residents in Los Angeles County, and black residents are 25% more likely than whites to have been infected, Ferrer said.
(Los Angeles County Department of Public Health)
Latino and black residents are disproportionately affected by the virus in many areas. In Los Angeles County, Latino and black residents are at least twice as likely to die from the coronavirus as white residents. For every 100,000 Latino residents, 54 have died from COVID-19 in Los Angeles County; For every 100,000 black residents, 46 have died. For every 100,000 Asian American residents, 29 have died; and for every 100,000 white residents, 23 have died.
Among 15 children in Los Angeles County infected with a rare but serious inflammatory syndrome associated with the coronavirus, 73% are Latino. And Latino women account for 3 out of 4 cases of COVID-19 among pregnant women in Los Angeles County, although Latino residents make up about half of the county’s population.
Many Latino women or their partners are essential workers who can have low-paying jobs, with little control over their working conditions, Ferrer said. “Latinx workers are not only becoming infected at a higher rate than others, but they are also more likely to transmit the infection to their families and this, as we have just seen, includes their pregnant partners.”
California’s COVID-19 hospitalizations hit records this week, reaching more than 7,000 hospitalized this week for the first time. On Monday, 7,091 people with confirmed coronavirus infections were in hospital across the state; on Tuesday, the figure was 7,170; and on Wednesday it was 6,825. Two months ago, about 3,000 people with confirmed COVID-19 infections were in California hospitals.
“We have more patients than ever in California,” said Rutherford.
There is more evidence that younger people are becoming increasingly infected and hospitalized. Cases among the youngest adults in Los Angeles County, those under 30, increased by 109% between mid-June and mid-July, but only increased by 53% among older people through age 79.
The children saw their rate of hospitalizations for COVID-19 in Los Angeles County increase by 50% during the same period, while it only increased by 13% for people age 65 and older.
Some called for much more aggressive action. State Senator Steve Glazer (D-Orinda) on Thursday called for a return to a stricter shelter order for the hardest hit counties reporting 200 cases per 100,000 residents in the past 14 days, which would include Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara and Ventura, along with counties in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys, and Marin and Solano counties in the Bay Area.
Of the 15 counties in California with per capita death rates worse than the state average in the past two weeks, 13 are in Southern California or the Central Valley. The two exceptions are Marin and Mendocino counties.
Imperial County has had the worst death rate by far than any other county in California, with 23.9 deaths per 100,000 residents in the past two weeks; well above the state rate of 3.4 deaths per 100,000 residents.
In Southern California, Los Angeles County reported the fifth-worst coronavirus death rate of any county in the state in the past two weeks on Thursday night, registering 5.7 coronavirus-related deaths per 100,000 residents. Orange County registered 4.5; Riverside County, 4.4; San Diego County, 2.9; San Bernardino County 2.5; and Ventura County, 1.2.
But there were some growing signs of optimism. Los Angeles County director of public health Ferrer ruled out on Wednesday the need for a renewed order to stay home for at least this week.
The effective transmission rate for the coronavirus is now about 0.94, which means that each person infected with the virus infects on average 0.94 people, said Dr. Christina Ghaly, director of health services for Los Angeles County. That’s better than it was in June, when it rose above 1 and fueled the rise in disease.
And the number of new COVID-19 patients requiring hospitalization in Los Angeles County, which had increased, has decreased and perhaps even started to decrease, Ghaly said. It stalled at a substantially worse number than in April, but the data suggests an improvement.
In Silicon Valley, health officials warned that it was important to protect the health of the most vulnerable and also avoid the worst impacts of orders to stay home.
“Low-income communities … are, in the first place, more likely to be hit harder by COVID-19, and also more affected by shelter-in-place, as many low-income communities have lost income,” he said. Dr. Sara Cody, Santa Clara County Health Officer, to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.
Times staff writers Ruben Vives, Jake Sheridan, Maya Lau, Alex Wigglesworth and Teresa Watanabe contributed to this report.
