[ad_1]
Two days after California Gov. Gavin Newsom suddenly announced he was canceling his regional stay-at-home order, deaths statewide and in LA County remained at near record highs.
Los Angeles officials said on Wednesday that the county had recorded 307 virus-related deaths in the past 24 hours. This is just 11 less than the highest ever recorded total of lives lost in the pandemic. This was recorded on January 8.
California as a whole on Wednesday reported its third-highest total of daily deaths from the pandemic with 697 lives lost.
The continuing toll means that in Los Angeles last week alone more than 1,500 residents were killed by Covid-19. This 7-day total equals 25% of the total who die from influenza in Los Angeles each year.
On the plus side, Los Angeles Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer noted an “encouraging trend” in the continued decline in the number of Covid-19 infections. As of Wednesday, 6,917 new cases were confirmed. This is down from the impressive number of 17,323 two weeks earlier.
Los Angeles County Director of Health Services Dr Christina Ghaly, who oversees county-run hospitals, said: “The number of inpatients this week continued to decline, from 800 at the peak to [now] about 500 patients per day. She warned that the current number was “still about twice the number of admissions we saw at the height of the outbreak in July.”
Ghaly said ICU admissions are just starting to decline and that trend is unlikely to impact daily death numbers, which is a lagging indicator, for about two weeks.
[ad_2]
Source link