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The dreaded post-Christmas spike in coronavirus cases appears to be materializing in Los Angeles County, with cases on the rise again, with hospitals already in crisis due to the Thanksgiving surge.
Los Angeles County posted its third-highest total of coronavirus cases on New Years Day, reporting 19,063 cases. This means that over the past seven days, there have been on average more than 16,000 new cases of coronavirus per day reported in the county – about 12 times greater than the comparable figure from November 1 and the highest figure ever. checked in.
The county had seen particularly aggressive growth in daily coronavirus cases in mid-December, but then saw new cases flatten out over the past week and a half, typically adding an average of 13,000 to 14,800 new cases per day.
The tally reported on Friday pushed the average number of new daily coronavirus cases over the past week to 16,077 – exactly the same time epidemiologists warned those infected around the Christmas holidays would start to become contagious.
The county also posted a high death toll on Friday – 193 deaths, the fourth highest single-day death toll. New Year’s Day followed three consecutive days of record deaths reported in a single day – 242 Tuesday, 262 Wednesday and 291 Thursday. Together, 988 deaths were reported during this four-day period.
Ahead of the release of Friday’s figures for LA County, Dr Robert Kim-Farley, a medical epidemiologist and infectious disease expert at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, said he expected the pandemic in LA County soon worsens due to the number of trips seen. at Christmas and New Year.
Kim-Farley said LA County was in the middle of a “viral tsunami,” but added that “we shouldn’t be frozen in desperation that we can’t do anything.”
“Now is the time to come to ‘higher ground’ – in this case higher ground means staying at home and not mingling as much as possible with other people outside your home and not be outside where the viral tsunami could reach us, ”Kim -Said Farley.
Despite the gloomy outlook for the coming weeks, Kim-Farley said: “There is no doubt in my mind that if we had not been ordered to stay home, the situation would be much more dire than it is not now. However, I think the sheer scale of the numbers shows that when faced with the stay-at-home order many people choose to ignore it, and without strict enforcement this mingling of household and party continues to occur.
The death toll has already climbed in December, largely because of people in droves, tired by the pandemic, ignoring calls from officials to stay home for Thanksgiving and deciding to reunite with friends and family during those days. holidays. There were 2,703 deaths from COVID-19 in LA County in December, by far the deadliest month in the pandemic and more than four times worse than the death toll of 585 in November.
LA County hospitals are overwhelmed by the pandemic, with most forced to turn down ambulances for much of the day as medical institutions fold under the weight of an unprecedented demand for critical hospital care. Hospital morgues and private funeral homes are so full of corpses that the National Guard has been asked to help store the bodies temporarily at the county medical examiner’s office.
As one of the largest metropolises in the country with some of the densest neighborhoods in the country, LA County is considered particularly vulnerable in the event of a pandemic. The county, home to more than 10 million people, suffers in a number of neighborhoods from high rates of poverty and expensive housing that lead to overcrowded housing. Southern California also has a large number of essential workers who have to leave their homes to work, many of whom are employed in food factories and warehouses, where the virus can also easily spread.
Some patients wait up to nine hours in waiting rooms with low blood pressure and low oxygen. A number of establishments report a dangerous lack of oxygen. Some patients transported by ambulances wait up to eight hours to be dropped off in the emergency room. There are concerns that people with strokes, heart attacks, and seizures may not get the prompt attention they need.
With so many COVID-19 patients suffering from inflamed lungs that prompt them to breathe, some aging hospital systems have been unable to meet the demand for high flows of oxygen that had to be delivered to their lungs. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to send crews to the area to update oxygen delivery systems at a handful of hospitals.
As of Friday evening, local health jurisdictions in LA County had identified 790,582 cumulative cases of coronavirus and 10,552 deaths from COVID-19. With LA County recording an average of 16,077 new coronavirus cases per day, the county is likely to mark its 800,000th coronavirus case in the coming days.
California now averaged 339 COVID-19 deaths per day as of Friday night over the past week, a record high. The state also averages around 40,000 new cases of coronavirus per day, just below the peak of 45,000 new cases per day recorded in mid-December.
Cumulatively, California has recorded 2.3 million cases of coronavirus and more than 26,000 deaths from COVID-19.
Other parts of the state are also struggling with overcrowded hospitals.
In Santa Clara County, hospitals have been stretched to the limit, with 50 to 60 patients every day stuck in emergency rooms waiting for a hospital bed. Often the only way for a patient to be transferred to a bed in an intensive care unit is when a COVID-19 patient has died, Dr. Marco Randazzo, emergency room doctor at Hospital O ‘Connor of San Jose and St. Gilroy Regional Hospital, told reporters Thursday.
The daily rate of coronavirus cases in Santa Clara County is more than 10 times what it was on October 30, officials said.
“This has been the state of the pandemic for several weeks, and it shows no signs of slowing down,” said Dr Ahmad Kamal, county health preparedness director. “What we are seeing now is not normal.”
Kamal pleaded with the public not to give up wearing masks, to stay socially removed and to cancel rallies. He said there are indications that Santa Clara County, in the days after Christmas, avoided the more dramatic deterioration in hospital conditions it suffered after Thanksgiving.
“It shows that stocks matter,” Kamal said. “Although this may seem futile, given the number of cases [at] and how prevalent COVID is in our community, we know that our decisions and actions are shaping the curve of this pandemic.
But many hospitals are already at breaking point, and officials fear a Christmas wave will make matters worse.
As of Friday, the number of Californians who died from complications from COVID-19 surpassed 26,000 – roughly the same number of Californians who, in a recent year, died of complications from the flu, diabetes, high blood pressure and liver disease combined.
Residents of Southern California mostly stayed at home on New Years Eve, heeding warnings from public health officials, but several large gatherings were still held in the area, including one by the activist Christian Sean Feucht who attracted around 2,500 mostly unmasked attendants to a church car park in Valence.
Despite the risks of the coronavirus spreading amid a deadly pandemic outbreak, people could be seen standing side-by-side jumping, singing and screaming in a video posted by Feucht’s Instagram account. Most in the crowd were not wearing face coverings.
Earlier Thursday evening, actor Kirk Cameron and others gathered at Point Mugu Beach in Ventura County, according to ABC-7 video and other sources.
“We need to listen to the voice of God, rather than being distracted by the noise of men. … And let’s let our 2021 be a year of trumpets and screams, ”Cameron said in a video posted to his Instagram page, which showed a crowd shouting and clapping in response to his sermon. Most people did not wear masks.
Times editors Cindy Carcamo and Matt Hamilton contributed to this report.
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