The dreaded increase in coronavirus cases appears to be happening in Los Angeles County, with a new increase in cases as hospitals are already in crisis due to the Thanksgiving boom.
According to an independent Times report from local health areas, the province reported on New Year’s Day, its third highest one – day total, and 16,603 cases on New Year’s Day. This means that over the past three days, an average of more than 16 000 new cases have been reported in the country per day – one of the highest such records.
Saturday’s count pushed the province’s cumulative number of cases past 800,000. In a sign of how fast the coronavirus is spreading, more than 400,000 of the infections have been reported since December 1st.
“This is the fastest acceleration of new cases than at any other time during the pandemic,” the LA Department of Public Health said.
More LA County residents die daily from COVID-19 than at any other point in the pandemic – an average of 178 deaths a day over the past week, which equates to one death every eight minutes, according to a Times analysis. Of LA County’s cumulative death toll of more than 10,600, more than 3,000 have been reported since December 1, including 136 on Saturday.
As hospitals are already overflowing, officials fear another increase in cases, which experts say will worsen conditions until January.
Just a week ago, there were some encouraging signs that new business in the province was slowly stabilizing – rising about 13,000 to 14,000 a day – as the stay-at-home order began to show results. But it celebrated little, because the numbers were still so high that they would continue to overwhelm hospitals and because health officials were convinced that the events would quickly wipe out the profits during the Christmas holidays.
Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, medical epidemiologist and infectious disease expert at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, said on Saturday that he expects cases to increase in the next two weeks as people exposed to the virus during Christmas and New Year become ill. and get. tested. This will be similar to the trends of Thanksgiving.
If the trends continue, hospitals are expected to be in their peak crisis by the end of January, and COVID-19 deaths will peak by mid-February.
“As people will hopefully travel less and have fewer gatherings in their homes after these recent rugby festivities … we should see a slump in the disease by the end of January,” Kim-Farley said. said.
The number of daily cases in late winter should also start to drop because many people who eventually survive the coronavirus infection will get immunity, Kim-Farley said.
This level of protection will not lead to a ‘herd immunity’ that protects the full population, but ‘it should lead to a decrease in the number of new cases among those who do not follow the guidelines for public health on masking and physical distance. ‘, Kim-Farley said. said.
It is only when 70% to 85% of the population has received the vaccine, which according to Kim-Farley will take place by early summer, that ‘true herd immunity will begin to reflect in a faster decline in the number of new cases in the population, ”said Kim-Farley. “By late summer or early fall, we should be able to return to a semblance of our life in the pre-COVID era, with limited restrictions on our activities, businesses and schools.”
‘And as more and more elderly people and people are being vaccinated in old age homes, we need to see a few drops in hospitalizations and deaths because residents in old age homes make up such a larger percentage … of all deaths due to COVID,’ ‘Kim-Farley said . . But there may be a delay in seeing a large decline in new daily cases, “since so many younger people are now dealing with the disease.”
Officials encouraged more people to stay home during the winter holidays than during Thanksgiving, and the hope was that more people would possibly obey. The Rose Parade was canceled for the first time since 1945 and Pasadena was a terrible calm.
But the same kind of pandemic fatigue seen during Thanksgiving has led many people to defy the pleas of officials to stay home for the winter holidays. Many airports have seen constant traffic of holidaymakers. And thousands of New Year’s festivities were spread, held or arrested in Southern California over the weekend, while big celebrations and parties took place in the region.
Los Angeles police officers said they tore apart at least eight New Year’s Eve gatherings involving more than 2,000 people in downtown and the surrounding area, including one warehouse party where more than 1,000 people were dispersed. Sheriff’s officials said they had torn apart at least five parties involving more than 900 people – including a rental house, a vacant warehouse, a hotel and a closed business.
Lieutenant Raul Jovel, a spokesman for the LAPD, said LAPD officials were “all monitoring social media” this week to identify planned parties. The job was not easy, in part because the party host “gets smarter”, he said. Promoters often announce a party in a public setting – such as in the city center – but post the address only at the last minute or not at all, trusting that it will be distributed orally.
Social media “influencers” and other young partygoers have posted on social media footage of revelers ringing in the old-fashioned way in the new year – by shouting, dancing and singing in closed spaces without masks.
On New Year’s Eve, Christian activist Sean Feucht pulled an estimated 2,500 mostly unmasked servants to a church parking lot in Valencia.
Actor Kirk Cameron and others gathered at Point Mugu Beach. “We need to listen to the voice of God, rather than be distracted by the noise of men,” Cameron said in a video posted on his Instagram page, showing a crowd screaming and clapping their hands. response to his sermon. Most people did not wear masks.
As hospitals endure a crisis across the country that is not seen in modern history, the stay-at-home order is expected to remain in force in most of the state for the foreseeable future. Government officials say the order will apply until the expected available capacity of intensive care units in a region rises to 15%; it remains at 0% in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley.
Some Hollywood studios, including CBS Studios, Universal Television, ABC Signature, 20th Television, Warner Bros. Television and Sony Pictures Television have also delayed the production of some TV shows from the winter holidays by at least a week. The decisions come when the LA County Department of Public Health on December 24 encouraged the film industry to do so. shut down production for a few weeks in view of the increase in COVID-19 deaths.
Despite the gloomy outlook for the coming weeks, Kim-Farley said: “I have no doubt that if we did not have the order to stay at home, the situation would be much worse than it is now. However, I think the extent of the numbers show that many people prefer to ignore it in the light of the stay-at-home order, and without mixing, this mixing of households and parties continues to take place. ‘
Hospitals in LA County are being hit by the pandemic, and most are being forced to turn down ambulances most of the day as medical institutions fold under the weight of an unprecedented demand for critical care. Hospitals’ mortuaries and private funeral homes are so full of corpses that the National Guard has been asked to help store the corpses temporarily at the office of the medical examiner-coroner. And health workers are dying from COVID-19 in a faster cut.
LA County is considered particularly vulnerable in a pandemic as one of the country’s largest metropolises with some of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the country. The province, where more than 10 million people live, suffers in a number of neighborhoods from high poverty and expensive housing leading to overcrowded homes. Southern California also has a large number of essential workers who have to leave their homes to work – many work in food factories and warehouses – where the virus can also spread easily.
Some patients spend up to nine hours in hospital waiting rooms with low blood pressure and low oxygen levels. Several facilities report that their oxygen supplies are becoming dangerously low. Some patients transported by ambulance wait up to eight hours to be dropped off at emergencies. There are fears that people who have stroke, heart attacks and seizures do not get the quick attention, and at least one person waiting for a kidney transplant has delayed his procedure because the ICUs are too full.
Because so many COVID-19 patients suffer from inflamed lungs that make them gasp for air, some aging hospital systems could not sustain the demand for high fluid oxygen. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to send teams to the region to update oxygen delivery systems at a handful of hospitals.
Times authors Cindy Carcamo, Marisa Gerber, Wendy Lee and Matt Hamilton contributed to this report.
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.