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Public Health Warns the Surge in Cases Must Stop to Save Lives, Help Distressed Hospitals and Overwhelmed Healthcare Workers
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (Public Health) has confirmed 75 new deaths and 9,243 new cases of COVID-19. This is the highest number of daily deaths since July 29.
Public Health urges everyone to help and collectively take the best actions available to get this situation under control: No gatherings/events with others outside of your immediate household, always and correctly wear face coverings/masks when around others, and maintain your physical distance from others who are not from your household. During this surge, everyone should also stay at home except for essential activities, avoid all travel that is not essential, get tested if you have symptoms or concerns, and isolate immediately from your family and others if you have symptoms or test positive for COVID-19.
L.A. County continues to experience more new cases reported each day for COVID-19 than at any point during the pandemic. This past week and a half, cases increased from an average of about 4,900 new cases each day the last week in November, to an average of more than 9,000 daily cases.
Testing results are available for nearly 3,985,000 individuals with 11% of all people testing positive. The County’s daily test positivity rate has increased significantly. From early November through November 29, the test positivity rate has increased 3-fold from around 3.5% to just over 9%. Today’s test positivity rate is 12.5%.
The surge in cases, which began around November 2 led to an increase in hospitalizations starting around November 9 and then, tragically, the start of an increase in deaths beginning around November 15.
There are 3,299 people with COVID-19 currently hospitalized and 23% of these people are in the ICU. The number of daily hospitalizations has increased over 400% from November 1 when the daily number of people hospitalized was 791.
Since November 9, average daily deaths have increased 258%, from 12 average deaths per day to 43 this week. Since these deaths reflect L.A. County case counts from a month ago, as cases have continued to increase the past few weeks, we will bear witness to a significant rise in the number of people who are dying.
The State reports the Southern California regional ICU bed capacity is currently 9%. As a reminder, The Southern California region, which includes L.A. County, is under the State Stay at Home Order because the ICU capacity for the region fell below 15%.
