Los Angeles County Public Health officials on Sunday reported 1,789 new cases of the coronavirus and 10 related deaths, but said the figures did not yet include a pending backlog of lab reports that could cause a spike in new cases.
Young residents remain responsible for much of the new cases, officials said. Of the recordings taken on Sunday, 35% were among residents 30 to 49, and 69% were among residents under 50, the Department of Public Health said in a news release.
Hospitalizations continued to trend downward, with a total of 1,514 confirmed coronavirus patients as of Saturday, compared with 2,017 patients two weeks earlier.
“As we begin to see the curve flat again, I urge everyone to remain cautious and attentive to the reality of COVID-19; it is not going away any time soon, ”said Barbara Ferrer, the province’s director of health, in a statement. “If we return to life as we knew it before the pandemic, we will once again increase cases, hospitalizations and deaths.”
She urged people to stay home as much as possible and to refrain from gathering with others from outside their households.
Los Angeles County has now recorded 208,528 cases of coronavirus and 4,977 deaths.
Orange County added 565 cases of the virus and six deaths on Sunday, bringing the total to 39,641 cases and 726 deaths. Hospitalizations continued there as well, with 487 confirmed coronavirus patients in hospital wards from Saturday, compared with 687 two Saturdays earlier.
Statewide, there are now 559,540 cases of the coronavirus, and 10,374 people have died. There were 5,636 hospital patients statewide with a confirmed case as of Saturday, a decline of 18% from two weeks before, according to the LA Times coronavirus tracker.
Officials have warned that the number of cases, including those reported by individual counties, could be artificially low due to glitches in the California Reportable Disease Information Exchange electronic database that resulted in hundreds of thousands of lab reports not being uploaded to the database. They are working on fixing the system and said that in new cases can cause a spike because the backlog of lab reports is removed. It is not clear whether the lost tests are widespread in the state or limited to a small number of counties.
Hospital records and death statistics are not affected by the reporting errors, officials said.
