Los Angeles and California officials disagree the Covid holiday wave has hit – Deadline

“This is clearly the last wave of winter and New Year holidays.” It was Friday Dr. Paul Simon, scientific director of public health in Los Angeles. “This is likely to continue over the next two weeks. We expect these numbers to continue to be high over the next two weeks, ”he said.

Los Angeles County reported another 18,313 cases of COVID-19 on Friday, one of the highest daily totals in the pandemic. Thursday’s number of new cases was 19,719 – another near-record. The county also reported 300 daily coronavirus-related deaths for the first time, at 318.

But on Monday, other officials were less sure about the outbreak.

When asked about the outbreak, California Director of Health and Human Services Dr Mark Ghaly said: “We still have a few days before we can confidently say.” Ghlay then observed that the situation “looks encouraging at the moment”.

His boss, Governor Gavin Newsom, immediately sought to temper this optimistic assessment by emphasizing: moment. “

Newsom reminded Californians that “Monday’s data is often lower” than that seen later in the week. “We’ll know more as the dust settles and reporting is often delayed over the weekend,” Newsom said. “This week will be deeply meaningful to be able to answer this question.”

The governor announced on Monday 39,839 new positive tests for Covid-19. He said the 14-day test’s positivity rate was up to 13.7% versus 12.6%, but that increase was not as strong as it had been.

Newsom said on Monday that the number of people hospitalized had increased by only 6% in the past 14 days. He called it “one of the smallest increases we’ve seen in a two-week period in some time.”

“It’s just a point of optimism, a little light,” said the governor, before warning that a further increase in hospitalizations is still possible given the recent winter vacation.

The number of reported deaths related to the virus statewide in the past 24 hours was 264. But Newsom warned that the 7-day average of daily deaths was 476 and that the lives of more than 5,500 Californians had been lost due to the pandemic in the last 14 days. .

On Monday in Los Angeles, Supervisor Hilda Solis said definitively at the county’s Covid briefing: “We are starting to see the holiday surge materialize. The situation is more dire than ever. Hospitals are on the verge of triage of care, which means decisions will have to be made about who can receive essential resources.

County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer acknowledged that the chart of new infections “shows the small drop in new cases after the New Year’s holidays,” but Ferrer attributed the drop to a decrease in testing. “We fully expect to see another increase now that we are two weeks away from Christmas vacation,” 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. This is down from 18,313 new infections reported on Friday and a near-record 19,719 daily cases on Thursday.

There were 137 new virus deaths reported Monday for a total of 12,387 so far in LA County. In just the last week, the region has lost 1,500 people to the pandemic, Ferrer said.

On Monday, 7,910 people were hospitalized with the virus in Los Angeles. County Health Services Director Dr Christina Ghaly said “the number of people hospitalized has stabilized for now”. But, she warned, the number of intensive care beds available at all hospitals in the region had fallen to 46. That’s for a county of 10 million people. There were 650 hospital beds available for the same population, the director said.

“We have a private hospital that is currently experiencing an internal disaster,” said Ghaly, “and the EMS agency is working with them to resolve their issues, which are primarily related to staffing.”

“The graph shows the small drop in new cases after the New Year holidays due to the decrease in testing,” Ferrer said. “We fully expect to see another increase now that we are two weeks away from Christmas vacation.”

Confusion over an increase in the number of viruses makes the sudden decision, announced on Sunday, to end testing at two main Los Angeles sites – among the largest in the country – all the more baffling. Dodger Stadium and the VA campus in Brentwood account for 1/3 of the county’s testing capacity, according to Ferrer. Those sites will focus only on delivering vaccines starting Monday, according to LA Mayor Eric Garcetti.