The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health on Saturday confirmed 48 new deaths and 1,644 new cases of COVID-19.
Younger residents continued to make up the majority of positive new cases. Of the new cases reported on Saturday, 71 percent were people under the age of 50. Residents between the ages of 30 and 49 make up 35 percent of new cases. That means Angelenos make up 30 to 36 percent of the new coronavirus cases reported Saturday.
While people in that age group typically have a lower risk of serious illness than death from COVID-19, Public Health is concerned that they may unknowingly infect parents, grandparents and friends and family who have underlying health conditions and who are at greater risk have for serious illness and death.
On Tuesday, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti gave permission to shut down utilities at a home in the Hollywood Hills, where several large parties were being held in violation of the city’s COVID-19 social media mandate. Garcetti said the city’s action comes after multiple law enforcement warnings were issued. The house was presumably the so-called Sway House, where Tic-Toc stars Bryce Hall, Noah Beck and Blake Gray lived. One of the events in question was Hall’s 21st birthday party, which attracted a “massive crowd of people who did not seem to wear masks or social distances,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
And while younger people are less likely to die in general, this state just lost a teenage girl in Orange County COVID-related deaths just this week. She was the second teen in the state to die due to the effects of the virus. The first was a July in the Central Valley. Both of these patients had pre-existing conditions.
While its overall death toll from the virus is much higher, Los Angeles County has not seen any deaths of people under the age of 18, but health officials say children between the ages of 0 and 4 now have the second-highest rate per 100,000 people of any age cohort, at just over 20.
When students report back to school, officials keep an eye on coronavirus cases among children. The state allows schools in grades up to and including sixth to apply for an exemption from all online learning.
California Director of Health and Human Services Dr. Mark Ghaly, himself a pediatrician, dedicated one of his coronavirus briefings this week to the issue of vaccinations for children.
Among children ages 0-18, he said, “California is running at only two-thirds of the vaccination level we were at at the same point in 2019.”
Vaccinations are crucial leading up to the fall and winter flu season, he noted, and still very much in the midst of a pandemic.
Those pleas are even more resonant, given the suspicion that children could be “superspreaders”. A new study from Massachusetts General Hospital and Mass General Hospital for Children this week should amplify that concern.
The study of 122 children aged 0-22 years found that children who tested positive for coronavirus showed much higher levels of the virus in their airways than even adult ICU coronavirus patients. And children were found in their first two days most infected with the virus, when they probably had no signs of disease.
On Friday, Los Angeles County health officials reported nine more cases of the pediatric disease known as Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome, or MIS-C. The new cases raised the total number of children in LA diagnosed with the rare but serious condition to 25.
No deaths have been reported in the province due to the condition, which affects children who either had COVID-19 or were exposed there. The disease causes inflammation of body parts including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, eyes or gastrointestinal organs, which sometimes result in lifelong health effects.
Health officials are still trying to learn what causes the syndrome and how it can best be treated.
The state monitors all counties on six indicators to determine their progress in slowing the spread of COVID-19. These indicators include test capacity, how much transmission of the virus occurs in the community, how many people are currently hospitalized for COVID-19, and the capacity of hospitals to provide people with COVID-19 with sufficient number of available intensive care unit beds and fans. LA County is meeting 5 of the state’s 6 indicators, and only fails the threshold to have less than 100 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. The business rate per 100,000 people today is 218.
The worldwide death toll from coronavirus dropped to 800,000 as of Saturday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The institute also reported more than 23 million cases worldwide.
The US continues to lead the world in the number of deaths, now with more than 175,000. There are an estimated 5.6 million infections in the country, with some observers believing that the number is much greater in untested than unreported cases.
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