Los Angeles County officials continue to report a decline in new cases of coronavirus, but say the emergence of a more transmissible, potentially more virulent variant underscores the importance of adhering to safety measures such as masking and distancing.
Public health officials on Saturday recorded 2,393 new cases of the virus and 136 related deaths, as well as two more cases of the B.1.1.7 variant first identified in the UK and which have since spread to at least 42 US states has. Experts predict that it will become the dominant coronavirus nationwide by the end of March. This is of concern because it is thought to be 50% more transmissible than the conventional variety and can also be more deadly.
Los Angeles County has now recorded a total of 14 cases of the B.1.1.7 strain, but experts said it is likely to be more, as only a small portion of samples undergo the genetic sequence needed to determine the variant. The variant has also been reported in the provinces of Alameda, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Mateo and Yolo.
Although research has shown that vaccines on the market remain effective against the B.1.1.7 variant, some officials have expressed fears that the contagion could provoke another boom, especially if an extensive vaccination campaign is slow and people get tired and disregard the public. safety rules.
“We need to remain diligent with our safety measures, even though we are seeing an overall decrease in cases, hospitalizations and deaths,” Barbara Ferrer, director of public health in LA County, said in a statement. “Let us watch, because we know that failure to watch will lead to more cases and tragically enough deaths.”
There were 2,369 COVID-19 patients in LA County hospitals as of Friday, a decrease of nearly 44% from two weeks earlier, when there were 4,186 patients.
Orange County reported a similar downward trend and recorded 391 new cases of the virus, 44 deaths and 591 patients in the hospital on Saturday, a decrease of about 46% from two weeks earlier.
This is due to severe winter weather elsewhere in the country delivering tens of thousands of doses of Moderna vaccines to California, which are large distribution sites managed by the city of Los Angeles, as well as some in the counties of Orange and San Diego, to run the operations interrupt. and postpones appointments that were originally scheduled for this weekend.
Officials said Thursday afternoon that the weather delays had not yet disrupted operations at vaccines run by LA County, and that mobile distribution sites in the city traveling to severely affected areas were also still in use.
About 250 workers at the first grocery, drugstores and meat packs were to be vaccinated Saturday afternoon at a pop-up clinic in the parking lot of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770 offices in Koreatown. The clinic, run in partnership with the state, was a satellite of the new mass vaccination site in the state of Cal, Los Angeles, the union said in a news release.
About 500 other vaccinations would be given Saturday at a Boyle Heights clinic for residents of Eastside and South Los Angeles 65 years and older. The effort was intended to increase access to vaccines for nearby community members, who are predominantly Latino and Black, and included door-to-door outreach and a shuttle service from nearby Ramona Gardens public housing apartments.
Public health authorities believe such outreach is important to alleviate the inequality that Latino and Black residents receive at significantly lower vaccinations than whites and Asian Americans, even though the death toll from the virus is higher.