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Los Angeles County officials said they were hopeful that a new set of restrictions could help slow the unprecedented surge in COVID-19 cases, but warned that a stricter home stay measure would be needed if the cases continue to climb.
Barbara Ferrer, LA County Director of Health, said on Saturday that officials hoped the more tightly-tailored restrictions would be enough to slow the spread of the coronavirus without reverting to more stringent home support orders like those put in place in March.
She said the county is “in a different place now than we were in March and April, when we didn’t have the science around masking and distancing.”
“Now that we’re doing it, it gives us a slightly different path,” she said. “But I’ll be honest: it only gives us a different path if everyone else does.”
The risk of allowing more people out, she said, is that efforts to slow the spread will only work if people choose to observe safety precautions. Otherwise, the county could end up where it was in early spring.
“If that doesn’t work, and in two to three weeks we find ourselves in a worse situation than us, we will have to go back and look at what else we have as options, because we cannot continue to risk overwhelming the health care system, ”Ferrer said. “I don’t think there is any disagreement on this – it is a disaster that we must avoid at all costs.”
His comments came a day after the county issued a new COVID-19 pandemic order that bans most gatherings and deters crowds, the latest in a series of desperate measures to slow coronavirus infections. Gatherings – outside of outdoor religious services and outdoor political protests – will be banned for three weeks from Monday. Retail stores will remain open, but at a more limited capacity.
Earlier this week, the county suspended outdoor restaurant meals.
The new order comes as LA County faces its worst crisis of the pandemic.
In both state and LA County, average daily coronavirus cases have quadrupled in recent weeks, and hospitalizations have tripled. Daily COVID-19 deaths are also on the rise – tripling in LA County and nearly doubling statewide in recent weeks.
As a region, Southern California has one of the highest average daily coronavirus rates in the state. In a seven-day period leading up to Thanksgiving, counties in Southern California reported an average of 40 daily cases of coronavirus per 100,000 residents, the highest on record in the pandemic. That’s more than twice as many as in the Bay Area, which has reported an average of 17 daily cases of coronavirus per 100,000 population.
The case rate has risen so dramatically that officials statewide are warning hospital beds could run out within weeks. If the staffing in intensive care units exceeds capacity, the death rate is sure to increase.
A influential model led by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Measurement and Evaluation, says without major changes in current policies or behavior, California is on track to double its cumulative death toll by now spring – from the current total of over 19,000 to over 37,000 by March 1.
COVID-19-related hospitalizations have tripled in the past month in California and Los Angeles County. COVID-19 hospitalizations statewide as of Friday stood at nearly 7,000, dangerously close to the historic high of 7,170 set in July. A month ago, on October 28, there were about 2,400 patients with COVID-19 in hospitals across the state.
More than 2,000 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in LA County on Friday, according to state data released on Saturday. A month ago, the figure was 750. LA County is approaching its all-time high of 2,232 COVID-19 hospitalizations seen in July.
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