Los Angeles County health officials on Wednesday reported some promising metrics in the fight against the new coronavirus, including an overall drop in deaths across demographics and a ‘narrowing the gap’ among victims of varying race, ethnicity and socio-economic backgrounds.
Residents of Blacks and Latinos and those living in lower-income neighborhoods have been among those hardest hit by the virus in Los Angeles County, said Barbara Ferrer, director of the Association for Public Health.
Officials said this was largely due to the initial limited access to testing among those communities at the start of the pandemic and the fact that many residents work in essential and high-risk institutions, many of whom did not lack good protective equipment, such as masks, before such gear was required.
The expansion of countywide testing and protective equipment now mandated in workplaces has helped both fix problems, and contributed to a drop in the number of general deaths in the province, officials said.
“Not only are we seeing declines, but we’re seeing a narrowing of the gap,” Ferrer said of the death toll in the province.
During the peak of the transfer in July, Black residents had “a rate of four deaths per 100,000 people,” the province said in a statement. That rate was three times that of white residents in the same period. The death toll for Black residents is now 1.7 deaths per 100,000 people, which is slightly higher than that of white residents.
Latinos have seen deaths per 100,000 people drop from a height of six in July to 2.4. “While it is declining, this is still 2.5 times higher than white residents,” the province said in a statement.
LA County health officials on Wednesday reported 61 new coronavirus-related deaths, bringing the total death toll to nearly 5,400. On Tuesday, the province reported 64 dead. And Ferrer said earlier this week that the seven-day daily average number of deaths has fallen from 43 in mid-July to 30 in mid-August.
Also on Wednesday, 1,956 new cases were recorded, including 100 from the state’s backlog – stemming from a hack into the electronic collection of test data more than two weeks ago – and a few hundred from laboratories that ‘ t reported Tuesday.
However, officials stressed the need to remain vigilant.
“We can not allow this progress to become us,” said State Department of Health Director Dr Christina Ghaly.
There are now more than 225,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the province, including about 2,400 positive test results from a backlog in the last week of July to nine days ago; Ferrer thinks at least 2,000 cases are still missing. The seven-day average for positive infection is now just below 6%, which is below the state safety threshold of 8%. For months, the province had exaggerated that rate.
Officials also reported that 1,378 people have been hospitalized in the province, continuing with a decline in the last 2 1/2 weeks.
But a handful of counties in the state are seeing a revamp in the number of hospitals, a potential sign of a rise in transmission rates.
California has recorded a 17% decrease in hospitalizations over a 14-day period, Govin Newsom said Wednesday in a news release. But the decline has not been steep and recent numbers are somewhat troubling, he said.
“The last few days are an important point of caution and consideration because they relate to our efforts,” Newsom said, noting that Wednesday’s hospital rate dropped just 0.1% from the day before.
Among the state’s hospital patients, 19% are in intensive care, up from 23% reported roughly two weeks ago.
At least five counties – Alameda, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo and Sonoma – have seen at least three days of increases in hospitalizations above the state safety threshold, according to the California Department of Public Health’s watchlist.
Nearly a dozen other counties, including Orange, Ventura and San Francisco, reported slight increases in patient hospitals on Tuesday, but those numbers were far below state levels’ satisfaction of a 10% or lower increase.
The rate of transmission of the disease to the community is particularly high because the state is fighting multiple major fires, forcing tens of thousands of residents to evacuate, and an extreme heat wave that has prompted blackouts and repeated calls for energy conservation.
“We have challenges – not only with energy challenges, because it relates to circumstances with burns, but we also continue to be challenged by this pandemic,” Newsom said Wednesday.
Because the virus is a respiratory infection, there is some concern that extreme heat and smoke from the fires may endure symptoms of the infected. Ferrer advised anyone who has been breathing to contact a health care provider or to call 911 if they are in need.
“This should not be a time for people who are already sick to play with their own health as they struggle to breathe,” she said.
