The dreaded post-Christmas increase in coronavirus cases appears to be materializing in Los Angeles County, with a further increase in cases, as hospitals are already in crisis with the Thanksgiving surge.
Los Angeles County posted its third highest total of coronavirus cases in a single day on New Year’s Day, reporting 19,063 cases. This means that in the past seven days, there have been an average of more than 16,000 new cases of coronavirus reported per day in the county – about 12 times the comparable number on November 1 and the highest number ever recorded.
The county had seen particularly aggressive growth in daily coronavirus cases in mid-December, but then saw new cases flatten out in the last week and a half, usually adding an average of 13,000 to 14,800 new cases per day.
The count released on Friday raised the average number of new daily cases of coronavirus in the past week to 16,077 – just around the time that epidemiologists warned that people infected around the Christmas holiday would begin to become infected.
The county also recorded a high death toll on Friday – 193 deaths, the fourth highest death toll in a single day. New Year’s Day followed three consecutive days of record deaths on one day – 242 on Tuesday, 262 on Wednesday and 291 on Thursday. Combined, 988 deaths were reported in this four-day period.
Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, an epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist at the School of Public Health at UCLA Fielding, said he believed the new rise in the average daily number of coronavirus cases is the start of the increase in coronavirus cases on the Christmas.
Kim-Farley said he expects there to be an increasing number of daily coronavirus cases in the next two weeks, as people exposed to the virus at Christmas and New Year get sick and get tested.
Kim-Farley said he expects hospitals to be at their peak crisis by the end of January. The daily number of COVID-19 deaths is expected to peak in mid-February.
“Given that people, with luck, will travel less and have fewer meetings in their homes after these recent consecutive holiday celebrations … we should begin to see some declines in disease rates by the end of January,” Kim-Farley said.
The number of daily coronavirus cases in late winter is also expected to start to decline because a large number of people who end up surviving coronavirus infection will develop immunity to the virus, said Kim-Farley.
This level of protection will not work to result in total “herd immunity” that protects the entire population, but “it should result in a decrease in the number of new cases in those who are not following public health guidelines on masking and physical distance”, Kim -Farley said.
Only when 70% to 85% of the population has received the vaccine, which Kim-Farley estimates will occur in early summer, “the herd’s true immunity will begin to be reflected in a faster drop in the number of new cases in the population”, said Kim-Farley. “In late summer or early autumn, we should be able to return to an appearance of our life in the pre-COVID era with very limited restrictions on our activities, businesses and schools.”
Before Friday’s numbers for LA County were released, Kim-Farley said he expected the LA pandemic to worsen soon because of the amount of travel seen at Christmas and New Year.
Despite the bleak outlook for the coming weeks, Kim-Farley said, “I have no doubt that if we were not ordered to stay at home, the situation would be much more dire than it is now. However, I think the magnitude of the numbers shows that, in the face of the order of stay at home, many people are choosing to ignore it and, without strong supervision, this mix of families and parties continues to occur. “
The death toll had already risen in December, largely as a result of mass people, fatigued by the pandemic, ignoring the authorities’ calls to stay home on Thanksgiving Day and deciding to meet with friends and family that holiday. There were 2,703 COVID-19 deaths reported in LA County in December, by far the deadliest month in the pandemic and more than four times worse than the number of 585 killed in November.
Hospitals across LA County are being overwhelmed by the pandemic, with most forced to refuse ambulances for much of the day, while medical institutions give in under the weight of unprecedented demand for critical hospital care. The morgues of hospitals and private funeral homes are so full of corpses that the National Guard was asked to assist in efforts to temporarily store the bodies in the county coroner’s office.
As one of the largest cities in the country, with some of the densest neighborhoods in the country, LA County is considered particularly vulnerable to a pandemic. The county, which is home to more than 10 million people, suffers in several neighborhoods with high poverty rates and expensive housing that lead to overcrowded homes. Southern California also has a large number of essential workers who have to leave their homes to work, many employed in food factories and warehouses, where the virus can also spread easily.
Some patients wait up to nine hours in waiting rooms with low blood pressure and low oxygen levels. A number of facilities are reporting that oxygen supplies are dangerously low. Some patients transported by ambulances wait up to eight hours to be returned to the emergency room. There is a fear that people who suffer from strokes, heart attacks and seizures are not getting the attention they need.
With so many patients with COVID-19 suffering from inflamed lungs that leave them short of breath, some aging hospital systems have been unable to meet the demand for high rates of oxygen that need to be channeled into the lungs. The United States Army Corps of Engineers is planning to send teams to the region to update oxygen delivery systems in some hospitals.
On Friday night, local health jurisdictions in LA County recorded 790,582 cumulative cases of coronavirus and 10,552 deaths from COVID-19. With LA County averaging 16,077 new coronavirus cases per day, the county is expected to mark its 800,000th coronavirus case in the coming days.
As of Friday night, California now recorded an average of 339 COVID-19 deaths per day for the past week, a record. The state also has an average of about 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 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 were stretched to the limit, with 50 to 60 patients a day trapped in emergency rooms waiting for a hospital bed. Often, the only way for a patient to be transferred to an intensive care unit bed is when a COVID-19 patient died, Dr. Marco Randazzo, an emergency physician at O’Connor Hospital in San Jose and Regional Hospital St. Louise in Gilroy, he told reporters on Thursday.
The daily rate of coronavirus cases in Santa Clara County is more than 10 times higher than on October 30, officials said.
“This has been the state of the pandemic for the past few weeks and shows no signs of abating,” said Dr. Ahmad Kamal, county health preparation director. “What we are seeing now is not normal.”
Kamal pleaded with the public not to give up wearing masks, to remain socially aloof and to cancel dates. He said there was some evidence that Santa Clara County, in the days after Christmas, prevented the most dramatic worsening of hospital conditions after Thanksgiving.
“It shows that actions are important,” said Kamal. “Although it may seem futile, given the number of cases we are [at] and how prevalent is COVID in our community, we know that our decisions and actions drive the curve of this pandemic. “
But many hospitals are already on the verge of collapse and authorities fear that a Christmas wave will make things worse.
As of Friday, the number of Californians who died of complications from COVID-19 was over 26,000 – almost the same number of Californians who, in a recent year, died of flu complications, diabetes, hypertension and liver disease combined.
Most Southern California residents stayed at home on New Year’s Eve, obeying warnings from public health officials, but several large meetings were still held across the region, including one by Christian activist Sean Feucht who attracted some 2,500 attendants, mostly unmasked, to a church parking lot in Valencia.
Despite the risks of spreading the coronavirus amid a deadly increase in the pandemic, people could be seen shoulder to shoulder while jumping, singing and shouting in a video posted by Feucht’s Instagram account. Most of the crowd did not wear facial covers.
Early Thursday evening, actor Kirk Cameron and others gathered at Point Mugu Beach in Ventura County, according to the ABC-7 video and other news sources.
“We need to hear God’s voice, instead of being distracted by the noise of men. … And let’s make our 2021 a year of trumpets and screams, ”said Cameron in a video posted on his Instagram page, which showed a crowd shouting and clapping in response to his sermon. Most people did not wear masks.
Times staff writers Cindy Carcamo and Matt Hamilton contributed to this report.