Despite some promising signs that the worst wave of the COVID-19 pandemic may finally be receding, a top Los Angeles County health official warned on Wednesday that the situation remains precarious, with thousands of people infected every day and an unsustainable number of patients in need of treatment in hospitals.
“The end is not yet in sight,” said county public health director Barbara Ferrer.
Although the county has recently seen welcome reductions in the number of coronavirus-positive patients in its hospitals, as well as in the daily infection rate, Ferrer emphasized that “COVID-19 is still rampant in our workplaces, in our neighborhoods and, really, in every corner of this county. ”
“While more people are being vaccinated, it is important to remember that we have a long way to go before saying goodbye to COVID-19,” she said.
Even so, there are some signs that the road ahead may not be so arduous.
Last week, the county reported an average of 11,369 new cases per day – down 25% from the seven-day period that ended on January 13, when LA County averaged 15,102 cases per day, according to with data compiled by The Times.
It is still too early to say whether this is a blip or the start of a new trend, however, as recent case numbers are likely to be distorted by the closure of test sites and delays in data reporting over the weekend of the Day by Martin Luther King Jr. Testing capacity has also decreased with the conversion of Dodger Stadium to a vaccination site.
Ferrer, however, said that “we are very hopeful that the actions taken by many are starting to work” and that coronavirus transmission rates are finally starting to fall.
Even though the reduction is legitimate, officials said it is only a fraction of what is needed to relieve the stress of overcrowded hospitals and overworked health staff. As Ferrer noted, “With a large number of daily cases, hundreds of people will need to be hospitalized every week.”
COVID-19 hospitalizations have also declined, although they remain too high to provide any real comfort. There were 7,263 coronavirus-positive patients hospitalized across the county on Tuesday, according to the latest available state data, which is about a 10% drop from the 8,098 record set on January 5.
The number of patients with COVID requiring intensive care, however, remained relatively stable over the same period – dropping to 1,692 on Tuesday, down just 2% from the record of 1,731 set on January 8.
While the reduction in total hospitalizations is “bringing much-needed relief,” said Ferrer, “it’s nowhere near the number we need to reduce, to really avoid all the changes that needed to be made in hospitals to accommodate” the crushing of patients.
But with each passing day the numbers remain stable or even tend to diminish optimism, the county may be emerging from its post-Christmas peak.
Although it looks less serious than the post-Thanksgiving rise, Ferrer said he doesn’t believe “we avoided a bullet because our hospitals are still overloaded and I think we still saw some increase in the holiday season cases.”
Ferrer said he “feels confident at this point that we can actually see less transmission in our communities as we go. [It’s] far from low enough to breathe easy because all the numbers are too high, but maybe it means that we can stabilize and, hopefully, start to see a significant decline. ”
At the state level, officials expressed some cautious optimism.
During the seven-day period that ended on Wednesday, the state recorded an average of about 33,000 new cases per day, significantly below the 45,000 seen earlier this month, the Times data show.
Still, some officials have asked against reading this number too much. Case rates have fluctuated in recent weeks as holidays temporarily closed test sites and delayed report results.
“We may still see some additional cases that may arise from the New Year season,” said Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, an epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, on Tuesday. . It would be wise, he said, “before I get too optimistic, let a few more days go by to make sure we have complete reports for this most recent time frame.”
But, he added, “cautious optimism may be necessary”.
A promising piece of data is that the rate at which tests confirm infection – a key indicator of the spread of coronavirus – has dropped.
In the first week of January, about 14.3% of exams in California were positive, the highest proportion since April. That seven-day positivity rate fell to 9.7% on Wednesday, according to state data. (In LA County, the daily positivity rate dropped from 20% on New Year’s Eve to 14% on Wednesday.)
The number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized across the state also dropped, and on Tuesday it dropped to less than 20,000 for the first time since December 27.
Of the 19,979 coronavirus-positive patients in California hospitals, 4,682 are in intensive care units.
COVID-19 hospitalizations in California peaked about two weeks ago, on January 6, reaching 21,938. The number of COVID-19 patients in ICUs across the state peaked on January 10, when there were 4,868.
Dr. Mark Ghaly, California’s secretary of health and human services, said the state “has not seen a significant increase in the Christmas and New Year holidays” as expected and, although there may still be some variation, officials are hopeful that the number will continue the downward trend.
“Hopefully, by the end of the month, we will be even lower than the number we see here,” he said on Tuesday. “This is great news, as we expected to be well over 25,000 admissions to our hospitals across the state.”
But many Californians are still paying the final price of the pandemic.
On Wednesday, health departments across the state confirmed that an additional 617 Californians died of COVID-19, the sixth highest daily total so far, according to The Times count. Of these, 206 deaths were reported in LA County, the third highest count in a single day of the pandemic.
But the trend is improving. California reported 534 COVID-19 deaths per day, weekly, in early January; on Wednesday, the state recorded 485 deaths a day in the previous week. LA County in early January peaked at 241 COVID-19 deaths per day; the county on Wednesday had an average of 206 deaths per day.
Cumulatively, more than 35,000 Californians died of COVID-19, including more than 14,000 in LA County. There have been more than 3 million cumulative cases of coronavirus in California, including more than 1 million in LA County.
It takes time for increases or decreases in infections to trigger a corresponding movement in the number of deaths, so many who were infected weeks ago may still die from COVID-19.
Although the state is now seeing “that glimmer of hope, that bright light,” Ghaly said California, at this point, “is still in the tunnel, but hopefully in the darkest part.”
But a steady decline is not inevitable. Officials point out that, even with the recent arrival of the COVID-19 vaccines, residents must continue to wear masks in public, avoid encounters with people outside the home and wash their hands regularly.
The new appearance of a more transmissible mutant variant of the coronavirus could easily complicate California’s path to recovery. There are two variants circulating in the state that officials are observing: one variant first identified in Great Britain, B.1.1.7, which is believed to be 50% more transmissible; and a variant first identified in Denmark, L452R, which concerns employees may be more transferable, but requires additional studies to determine whether this is the case.
“If there is more transmission, there will be more cases and we have all seen … that more cases eventually lead to more deaths,” said Ferrer.