The Orange County Health Care Agency announced the province’s first pediatric death in connection with COVID-19 on Thursday, a teenage girl with significant underlying medical conditions.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, three people aged 18 to 24 have died from coronavirus complications in Orange County, but this was the first death of a person under 18. While its total deaths from the virus are much greater, Los Angeles has County has not seen deaths from people under 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 cohort of age, at just over 20.
The exact age of the Orange County girl and other details were not released. Officials learned of her death Tuesday.
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She becomes the second person under the age of 18 to die from the virus in the state.
The first was a teenage boy from the Central Valley in late July.
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.
“This year getting your flu vaccine is especially important,” Ghaly insisted, saying it could help prevent upper respiratory tract infections and travel to the emergency room, an institution that could be a threat to COVID infection. .
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.
That is true, according to the authors, “the viral loads of these hospitals patients are significantly lower than a ‘healthy child’ who ran with a high viral load SARS-CoV-2.”
Falls among young adults have risen sharply in the past 7 weeks and that age group is “now driving infections in LA County,” according to Los Angeles County Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer. Ferrer made the statement at her regular press conference on coronavirus last Wednesday.
Adults aged 18-29 now have the highest rate rates per 100,000 people of any demographic, at just over 25, she said.
Ferrer said these two age groups have seen “explosive growth” in the past 6 weeks. They now account for close to 70 percent of all new cases.
But older residents are not in the clear.
Warn that people of all ages with pre-existing health conditions are particularly susceptible to serious illness or death if they contract COVID-19, the Los Angeles County Chief Medical Officer said today high blood pressure and diabetes were the most common underlying diseases in
coronavirus patients who have died.
“About 5,500 people died from COVID-19 in Los Angeles County and you can see that nearly 3,000 … had hypertension and more than 2,000 – a large proportion of the dead – had diabetes,” said Dr. Jeffrey Gunzenhauser in an online briefing.
Roughly 92% of people who died in the province from COVID-19 had some form of underlying health condition. In addition to hypertension and diabetes, other common conditions include cardiovascular disease, pulmonary disease, chronic renal disease, obesity, asthma and liver disease. Gunzenhauser notes that some people who died from the virus had more than one underlying condition.
“When you think about these diseases, you should realize that these are very common,” Gunzenhauser said. “Hypertension is extremely common in the
elderly, and the majority of persons over 65 may have this condition. There could be more than 10% of adults in province with diabetes. Obesity is very common, etc.
“… These are people who are very healthy, well managed through the health care system with these conditions,” he said. “The point is that if they get this infection too, they are really running the risk of becoming very ill and possibly dying from this virus. Again, these are people who are in our communities. They go to work. They are out for shopping. They are all around us. It could be any of us. We have a collective responsibility to protect them. That’s really what’s going on with COVID. “
Gunzenhauser noted that although most people who died of COVID-19 and an underlying condition were over the age of 65, about one-fourth of them were 41-64 years old and about 3% were between 18 and 40 years old.
“People may look at the percentages and think they are not a risk, but if you realize that the millions of people in Los Angeles County who are in these age groups represent even a small percentage, such as 3 or 5%, an awful lot. of people, “he said.” The point is that everyone is a risk. “
Gunzenhauser reiterated recent optimism about the declining trend in figures for major coronavirus in the province.
“The number of hospitalizations, the number of deaths and the positive percentage have been declining lately, which is really good news, and we are very hopeful that those positive trends will continue in the future.”
The province reported 57 more deaths from the virus on Thursday, while Long Beach reported one more death toll. The new deaths raised the total county counties since the beginning of the pandemic to 5,444.
The province announced 1,603 new cases, while Long Beach added 52 and Pasadena reported six. The county’s cumulative total was 227,404.
A total of 1,378 people were hospitalized on Thursday due to COVID-19, the same number as on Wednesday. The number of hospitalizations has gone down in recent weeks, although health officials said the decline is the same in recent days. But the number is still well below the roughly 2,200 hospital patients seen in mid-July.
County public health director Barbara Ferrer said Wednesday that the virus has a disparately high impact on Latino / a, Black and Native Hawaiian-Pacific Islander residents, as well as on lower-income residents. But she said recent figures show that some progress is being made in closing the gap among ethnic groups, both in terms of new cases and deaths.
‘As you have seen, we have come a long way in reducing and eliminating the gaps we have seen in the health outcomes of COVID-19. But as I noticed, we’re starting to see some progress, “Ferrer said.” … I think testing and access to testing is one of the areas that I would appreciate at this point that has some responsibility for narrowing the gap, because it allows people to be identified early as positive and they are able to isolate and can quarantine their close contacts, which reduces the transmission of the community, and then the transmission reduces those it can happen in the workplace. “
City News Service contributed to this report.
