“This is very clearly the latest boom for the winter holidays and the new year.” This was Friday, head of public health scientists in Los Angeles, dr. Paul Simon. ‘It’s likely to continue for the next week or two. “We expect these numbers to remain high over the next few weeks,” he said.
Los Angeles County reported another 18,313 COVID-19 cases on Friday, one of the highest daily totals of the pandemic. Thursday’s number of new cases was 19,719 – another record. The province also reported, for the first time ever, 300 daily coronavirus deaths, at 318.
But on Monday, other officials were less sure about the boom.
Asked about the boom, California’s director of health and human services, Dr. Mark Ghaly, said: “We still have a few days before we can say with confidence.” Ghlay noted that the situation “looks encouraging at the moment.”
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His boss, Governor Gavin Newsom, immediately tried to temper the optimistic assessment, emphasizing: ‘At the moment. ”
Newsom reminded Californians that “Monday’s data is often lower” than was seen later in the week. “We will know more as the dust settles and the reporting backlogs we see regularly over the weekend,” Newsom said. “This week will be very important to be able to answer the question.”
The governor on Monday announced 39,839 new positive Covid-19 tests. He indicated that the positive rate of 14 days was from 12.6% to 13.7%, but that the rise was not as steep as before.
Newsom said Monday the number of people admitted to hospital has increased by just 6% in the past 14 days. He calls it “one of the smallest increases we have seen in a period of two weeks at a time.”
“It’s just a point of optimism, a little light,” the governor said before warning that another jump in hospitalizations was possible given the recent winter holidays.
The number of deaths reported in the past 24 hours across the country related to the virus was 264. But Newsom warned that the average daily deaths of 7 days were 476 and that the lives of more than 5,500 Californians in the past 14 days lost to the pandemic. .
On Monday in Los Angeles, Supervisor Hilda Solis said definitively during the province’s Covid briefing: ‘We are beginning to see the increase in the holiday season. The situation is dire than ever before. Hospitals are on the verge of care, which means that decisions have to be made about who can receive essential resources. ”
The province’s director of public health, Barbara Ferrer, acknowledged that the graph of new infections ‘does show the decline in new cases after the New Year holiday’, but Ferrer attributed the decline to reduced testing. “We fully expect that we will get another increase now that we are two weeks away from the Christmas holidays,” she said.
“Covid kills someone every 8 minutes” in LA County, Ferrer said. “Ten people test positive every minute.”
Ferrer reported 12,617 new cases on Monday. That is down from 18,313 new infections reported on Friday and nearly 1919 daily cases on Thursday.
On Monday, 137 new virus deaths were reported for a total of 12,387 in LA County. In the last week, the region lost 1,500 people to the pandemic, Ferrer said.
On Monday, 7,910 were admitted to the hospital with the virus in LA. The director of health services in the province, dr. Christina Ghaly, said that “the numbers of hospitalized people have stabilized for the time being.” But, she warned, the number of beds available for industry in all hospitals was up to 46. That is for a country of ten million people. There were 650 hospital beds available for the same population, the director said.
“We have one private hospital that is currently in an internal disaster,” Ghaly said, “and the EMS agency is working with them to resolve their staff-related issues.”
“The graph shows the small decrease in new cases after the New Year holiday due to reduced testing,” Ferrer said. “We expect to see another increase now that we are two weeks away from the Christmas holidays.”
The confusion over the increase in virus numbers makes the sudden decision, announced on Sunday, to end the test on two major LA sites – among the largest in the country – all the more astonishing. Dodger Stadium and the VA campus in Brentwood account for 1/3 of the province’s test capacity, according to Ferrer. According to Mayor Eric Garcetti, the sites will only focus on delivering vaccines from Monday.