Two days after California Governor Gavin Newsom suddenly announced that he was rescinding his regional home order, deaths across the state and in LA County remained at almost record levels.
Los Angeles authorities announced on Wednesday that the county had recorded 307 virus-related deaths in the past 24 hours. That’s just 11 less than the highest total of lives lost in the pandemic. This was recorded on January 8.
California in general reported the third highest number of daily deaths in the pandemic on Wednesday, with 697 lives lost.
The continuing number of victims means that in Los Angeles just last week, there were more than 1,500 residents killed by Covid-19. This 7-day total is equal to 25% of the total number of people who die of influenza every year in LA.
On the positive side, Los Angeles’ Director of Public Health, Barbara Ferrer, noted a “hopeful trend” in the continuing decline in the number of Covid-19 infections. On Wednesday, 6,917 new cases were confirmed. That’s a drop from a whopping 17,323 just two weeks earlier.
LA County Health Services Director Dr. Christina Ghaly, who oversees hospitals administered by the county, said: “The number of patients hospitalized this week has continued to drop from 800 at peak to [now] about 500 patients a day. ”She warned that the current number is” still approximately double the number of hospitalizations we saw at the height of the sudden increase in July “.
Ghaly said ICU admissions are just starting to decline and that trend is unlikely to affect daily mortality figures, which are a lagged indicator, for about two weeks.