Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Wednesday that the region had 4,825 new coronavirus infections. That’s a record number of new cases for a single day, surpassing the previous high of 4,592 on July 16.
However, Ferrer warned, “more than 2,000 of those cases stem from an accumulation of laboratory reports.” With that in mind, the director said, “Actually, we are about 1,000 cases higher than a month ago.”
More than Term
Ferrer noted the same thing about the county’s new COVID-19 death report. She said the death toll from the virus recorded in the past 24 hours was 91. The total number of deaths in Los Angeles County since the pandemic began is now 4,516.
Despite the mitigating factors, it’s still a “higher death count than ever,” Ferrer said. The previous record for daily coronavirus-related deaths was 73, set on July 14.
Dr. Christina Ghaly, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, said, “We are now seeing a very gradual decrease in the number of hospitalizations.” She said the county model indicated a continuation of that in the next four weeks. Ghaly attributed that decline to the retracement of reopening patterns a few weeks ago.
Ghaly also said those actions “absolutely led to a decrease in the effective transmission rate” to 0.92. Any number less than 1 means that each infected person transmits the virus to less than another person.
Ghaly said the model now predicts that only 15 percent of county residents will be infected by December. If the reduction measures had not been taken, Ghaly said, the model shows that about half of the county’s residents would have been infected during the same period.
After reporting an unusually low number of daily COVID-related deaths in the past 72 hours, California also announced a record number of deaths from coronavirus on Wednesday. The new high was 197. That’s a 20 percent jump from the previous high of 159, recorded last Friday.
Today’s update # COVID19:
– 99,600 tests reported yesterday
– 8,755 positive cases
– The positivity rate has slightly decreased to an average of 7.4%.Tragically, CA surpassed another bleak milestone today: 197 deaths. Our highest reported in a single day.
Please wear a mask.
– Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) July 29, 2020
State and local officials have said the figures were significantly lower recently due to delays caused by a new federal reporting process. As a result, Wednesday’s number may be a little inflated due to the results of daily tests.
Public Health plans to receive a backlog of cases in the coming days due to delays in previous reports in the state’s electronic laboratory system. Hospitalization data is incomplete due to data from three hospitals not included in today’s update.
– LA Public Health (@lapublichealth) July 28, 2020
That happens just two days after the governor announced in his daily press conference that the state’s Central Valley was the new main area of concern.
Los Angeles County officials on Tuesday reported a total of 2,708 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 numbers, and the county’s Department of Public Health announced 51 new deaths from the virus. The department said it anticipates receiving a backlog of cases in the coming days due to reporting delays, and three hospitals did not report data today.
With the new cases, the county has a total of 178,642 positive COVID-19 cases and 4,426 deaths to date. There are 2,051 current coronavirus-related hospitalizations as of Tuesday, with 18% of those patients on ventilators. Total hospitalizations decreased from the all-time high of 2,232 hospitalized patients on July 20, but increased from 2,017 on Monday.
And those numbers are incomplete due to delays in a new federally mandated reporting process that has local officials awaiting information from the state. “We believe there are still six hospitals [outstanding]”Ferrer said.
The best of the deadline
Sign up to receive the newsletter For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
