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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.
The county reported 19,063 cases on New Years Day, its third-highest total on a day, and 16,603 on Saturday, its fifth total, according to an independent tally from the Times of local health jurisdictions. This means that over the past three days, an average of more than 16,000 new cases per day have been reported in the county – one of the highest on record.
Saturday’s tally pushed the county’s cumulative number of cases beyond 800,000. A sign of how quickly the coronavirus is spreading, more than 400,000 of these infections have been reported since December 1.
“This is the fastest acceleration of new cases than at any time during the pandemic,” the LA County Department of Public Health said.
More LA County residents die each day from COVID-19 than at any other time in the pandemic – an average of 178 deaths per day over the past week, the equivalent of one death every eight minutes , according to a Times analysis. Of LA County’s cumulative death toll of more than 10,600 dead, more than 3,000 have been reported since December 1, including 136 on Saturday.
With hospitals already overflowing, officials fear a further rise in cases, which experts say will worsen conditions until January.
Just a week ago, there were encouraging signs that new cases in the county were slowly leveling off – leveling off at around 13,000 to 14,000 per day – as the stay-at-home order began to pay off . But that was not very encouraging, because those numbers were still so high that they would continue to overwhelm hospitals and because health officials were convinced that gatherings over the Christmas holidays would quickly wipe out those gains.
Dr Robert Kim-Farley, a medical epidemiologist and infectious disease expert at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, said on Saturday he expects cases to increase over the next two weeks as people exposed to the viruses at Christmas and New Year get sick and get sick. tested. It would be similar to Thanksgiving trends.
If these trends continue, hospitals are expected to be at their peak of crisis by the end of January and deaths from COVID-19 would peak in mid-February, he said.
“Given that people will hopefully travel less and have fewer gatherings at home after these recent back-to-back holiday celebrations … we should start to see a drop in disease rates by the end of January,” Kim- Farley told me.
The number of daily cases at the end of winter is also expected to start declining as many people who eventually survive coronavirus infection will develop immunity, Kim-Farley said.
This level of protection will not translate into full “herd immunity” that protects the entire population, but “it should lead to a decrease in the number of new cases in those who do not follow public health guidelines on masking. and physical distancing, ”Kim-Farley told me.
It will not be until 70% to 85% of the population have received the vaccine, which Kim-Farley says will occur in early summer, that “true herd immunity will begin to translate into a more rapid drop in blood. number of new cases. in the population, ”Kim-Farley said. “By late summer or early fall, we should be able to regain some semblance of life in the pre-COVID era with significantly reduced restrictions on our operations, businesses and schools.”
And as more and more seniors and people living in nursing homes are vaccinated, “we should see a drop in hospitalizations and deaths because nursing home residents make up such a higher percentage … of all deaths from COVID, ”Kim-Farley said. . But there could be a delay in seeing a sharp drop in new daily cases, “given that so many young people are now living with the disease.”
Officials had urged more people to stay home during the winter holidays than during Thanksgiving, and there was hope more people could have obeyed. The Rose Parade was canceled for the first time since 1945 and Pasadena was an eerie calm.
But the same kind of pandemic fatigue seen during Thanksgiving has led many to defy calls from officials to stay home for the winter holidays. Many airports have seen regular traffic from vacationers. And thousands of New Year’s revelers were scattered, detained or arrested throughout the weekend in Southern California as big celebrations and parties unfolded in the area.
Los Angeles Police Department officials said they disrupted at least eight New Year’s Eve rallies involving more than 2,000 people in and around downtown, including a warehouse party where more than 1,000 people were scattered. Sheriff officials said they broke up at least five parties involving more than 900 people – including at a rented house, vacant warehouse, hotel and closed business.
Lieutenant Raul Jovel, an LAPD spokesman, said LAPD officials were “monitoring all social media” this week to identify planned parties. The job hasn’t been easy, in part because party planners are “getting smarter,” he said. Promoters often announce a party in a general area – such as downtown – but will only post the address at the last minute or not at all, relying instead on word of mouth.
Social media ‘influencers’ and other young revelers posted images on social media of revelers ringing in the New Year the old-fashioned way – shouting, dancing and singing together in enclosed spaces without masks.
On New Year’s Eve, Christian activist Sean Feucht drew around 2,500 mostly unmasked people 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 being distracted by the noise of men,” 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.
With hospitals enduring a statewide crisis that has not been seen in modern history, the stay-at-home orders are expected to remain in effect in most states for the foreseeable future. State officials say the order will remain in effect until the expected available capacity of intensive care units reaches 15% in one region; 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 resuming production of some winter break TV shows for at least a week. The decisions were made when the LA County Public Health Department on December 24 encouraged the film industry to suspend production for a few weeks in light of the increase in deaths from COVID-19.
Despite the bleak 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 far 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 mix of household and household. parties continues to happen. “
LA County hospitals have come under fire from the pandemic, with most forced to refuse ambulances for much of the day as medical institutions fold under the weight of an unprecedented demand for intensive care. Mortuary hospitals 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. And healthcare workers are dying from COVID-19 at a faster rate.
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 spend up to nine hours in hospital 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 fears that people with strokes, heart attacks and seizures may not get the prompt attention they need, and at least one person awaiting a kidney transplant has had their procedure delayed because of the ICU are too full.
With so many COVID-19 patients suffering from inflamed lungs causing them to run out of air, some aging hospital systems have been unable to meet the demand for high flow rates of oxygen. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to send crews to the area to update oxygen delivery systems at a handful of hospitals.
Times editors Cindy Carcamo, Marisa Gerber, Wendy Lee and Matt Hamilton contributed to this report.
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
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