Two days after Gavin Newsom, governor of California, suddenly announced that he was revoking his local homeland security order, the deaths across the country and in LA County remained at near record levels.
Los Angeles officials announced Wednesday that the country has recorded 307 virus-related deaths in the past 24 hours. That is just 11 less than the highest number of lives ever lost by the pandemic. It was recorded on January 8th.
Greater California lost its third-highest daily death toll from the pandemic Wednesday at 697 lives.
The continuing toll means more than 1,500 residents have been killed by Covid-19 in LA alone in the past week. The total of 7 days is equal to 25% of the total who die annually from the flu in LA.
On the brighter side, Barbara Ferrer, director of public health in Los Angeles, noted a “hopeful trend” in the continuing decline in the number of Covid-19 infections. On Wednesday, 6,917 new cases were confirmed. That’s less than just 17,323 just two weeks ago.
Christina Ghaly, director of health services in LA, which oversees provincial hospitals, said: ‘The number of patients admitted to the hospital this week has continued to drop from 800 to [now] about 500 patients per day. She warned that the current number “is still about twice the number of admissions we saw at the height of the boom in July.”
Ghaly said ICU admissions had just begun to decline and that the trend was unlikely to affect daily mortality rates, which is a backlog indicator, for about two weeks.