REDONDO BEACH, CA – Warning that people of all ages with pre-existing health conditions are especially susceptible to serious illness or death if they contract COVID-19, Los Angeles County Chief Medical Officer said Thursday that 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 Drs. Jeffrey Gunzenhauser in an online briefing.
Roughly 92 percent of the people who died in the province from COVID-19 had some sort of underlying health status. 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 people over 65 can have that condition. There could be more than 10 percent of adults in province with diabetes. Obesity is very common, and so on.”
“These are people who are very healthy, well managed through the health care system with these conditions,” he said. “The point is if they get this infection too, they are really at risk of becoming very ill and possibly getting away from this virus. Again, these are people who are in our communities. They are going to work. They are out shopping. They’re all around us. It could be any of us. We have a collective responsibility to protect them. That’s really what COVID is all about. “
Gunzenhauser notes 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 percent were between 18 and 40 years old.
“People can look at the percentages and think they’re not at 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, like 3 or 5 percent, an awful lot. of people, “he said. “The point is, everyone is at 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. That 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.
“We have a long way to go, as you have seen, to reduce and eliminate the gaps we have seen in the health outcomes of COVID-19. But as I have already noted, we have begun something to see progress, ”Ferrer said. “I think testing and access to testing is one of the areas that I would at this point have some responsibility for reducing the gap, because it allows people to be identified early on as positive and they can isolate and quarantine their close contacts, which reduces the transmission of the community and then reduces the transmission that can occur in workplaces. “
Oncologist and COVID-19 research expert Steven O’Day, MD, executive director of the John Wayne Cancer Institute at Providence Saint John’s Health Center, has been involved in several ongoing COVID clinical trials and has looked at how people with pre-existing conditions a higher face are at risk if they are fighting the virus.
“The virus and inflammation need to be targeted first,” O’Day said in June.
This work involves targeting large inflammation in the lungs and stopping the virus before it progresses. This can be difficult for people with pre-existing conditions.
“People who are over 60 and have heart disease or diabetes because you are in a high-risk group are at a higher risk,” O’Day said.
– City News Service and Patch Editor Nicole Charky contributed to this report.
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