The Los Angeles County health department on Tuesday announced the fourth instance in a week that the region had seen more than 2,000 new cases of COVID-19. That is a daily mark that is not seen even at the height of the spread of the virus. The 24-hour total reported on Tuesday was 2,364.
Even more worrying was the increase in hospitalizations and the rate of spread.
From the department’s press release:
Public health continues to assess key recovery indicators to understand how COVID-19 is affecting communities and the ability to treat people who can become seriously ill. Public health is seeing small increases in hospitalizations and in the 7-day average of the daily positivity rate. There are 1,515 people who are currently hospitalized, 27% of these people are in the ICU and 18% are on ventilators. Although this number is significantly less than the peaks of more than 1,900 people hospitalized daily by COVID-19, this is higher than between 1,350 and 1,450 daily hospitalizations observed in recent weeks. And while the cumulative positivity rate remains at 8%, the 7-day average of the daily positivity rate has risen to 8.8%.
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A day earlier, the department had set the 7-day positivity rate at 8.4 percent.
Statewide, hospitalization totals broke records both on Saturday and Sunday, with 3,702 COVID-19 patients reported in hospital beds. The peak before the weekend came almost two months earlier, on April 29. That was 3,497 new hospitalizations.
Inpatient numbers are increasing more rapidly in Southern California. But some counties in the Central Valley and Bay Area also encountered a handful of cases of their highest total number of COVID-19 hospitalizations.
Overall, after an increase in cases is reported, experts look at whether there’s an increase in hospitalizations to confirm an outbreak, rather than just an increase in cases due to an increase in testing. The weekly number of tests for Los Angeles County stands at 87,000. That’s an eight-week low, down from the 117,000 high five weeks ago.
Los Angeles County news page COVID-19 says: “If we see growth in the number of new patients requiring hospitalization in the coming weeks … transmission is increasing in our communities and we must take further steps to help reduce the spread of COVID- 19. ”
According to the Associated Press through the Sacramento Bee, National Park officials reversed the course on reopening Yosemite on Tuesday for fear of the virus. Park officials had begun reopening some Yosemite camps before they were closed for more than two and a half months due to the pandemic.
But AP now reports that reservations with arrival dates between now and July 31 have been canceled.
PREVIOUSLY, MONDAY AFTERNOON Los Angeles County health officials said Monday the region had a record 2,571 new cases of coronavirus, which is more than 20% higher than the previous daily mark set last week.
“Today is the third day of the week that we report 2,000 or more COVID-19 cases,” said Dr. Barbara Ferrer, the county’s director of public health on Monday. “And while some of the increases are due to test reporting issues, it is clear that much of the increase represents increased transmission from the community.”
Also on Monday, the county announced that the current daily positivity rate, which is a 7-day average of the daily positivity rate, had risen to 8.4 percent. “For comparison,” said a county tweet, “our 7-day average daily positivity rate was 5.8% on June 12, just 10 days ago.”
That came when the state as a whole saw its own record with 4,515 new positive laboratory cases of COVID-19 reported on Saturday. In a Monday morning update with accurate figures through Sunday, California reported more than 4,200 new cases in one day.
The state has surpassed an official infection figure of 170,000.
On Tuesday, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, told Congress representatives in the House that, “The next two weeks will be critical to our ability to address those waves that we are seeing in Florida. , Texas, Arizona and other states. ” Fauci called the increase in states like California “very troublesome.”
