LOS ANGELES – For the second time in two days and third time this week, Los Angeles County set a new record Friday for daily COVID-19 infections, reporting nearly 14,000 new cases and pushing the county over the cumulative half-million mark.
The county reported 13,815 new cases on Friday, above the record set Thursday of 12,819 and well beyond the previous record set Sunday of 10,528. For context, the county two weeks ago was averaging 4,200 new cases per day, but this week’s average is 10,200.
“We’re in uncharted territory at this point,” county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said. “We’re seeing daily numbers of cases and hospitalizations that we’ve not experienced and frankly did not anticipate. Our intensive care unit capacity continues to drop. We’re on a very dangerous track to seeing unprecedented and catastrophic suffering and death here in L.A. County if we can’t stop the surge. And in order to stop this very dangerous surge, today I’m making a request to everyone in L.A. County to stay home as much as possible.”
The new cases reported Friday gave the county a cumulative total of 501,635 since the start of the pandemic. The death toll also grew Friday, with the county announcing 50 more fatalities, increasing the overall total to 8,199. View the latest detailed report by city and demographics here.
Hospitalization numbers also continued a troubling climb, with the county reporting 3,624 people being treated for the coronavirus, and 23% of those people, roughly 830, were in intensive care. Ferrer said if current trends continue, the number of coronavirus patients hospitalized and in intensive care will double in two weeks — a troubling circumstance given the roughly 2,100 available adult ICU beds in the entire county, a number based more on available staffing than physical beds.
According to the county Department of Public Health website, the county as of Thursday had 606 non-specialized adult hospital beds available, and 71 adult ICU beds. For the week that ended last Saturday, the county averaged 658 confirmed or suspected COVID patients in ICU beds each day, along with 1,483 ICU patients being treated for non-COVID reasons, leaving a daily average of 96 available/staffed beds.
Ferrer said cases were already trending upward in the county prior to Thanksgiving, prompting the county to cut off outdoor dining at restaurants, but the current dramatic surge in cases is directly attributable to gatherings and travel that occurred over the holiday in spite of public health warnings, creating a surge on top of a surge.
And if another surge from Christmas compounds matters, the situation at hospitals “could become catastrophic,” Ferrer said.
Dwindling ICU capacity prompted the state this week to impose a regional stay at home order for the 11-county Southern California region. The order was triggered when overall ICU capacity dropped below 15%. As of Friday, the state’s estimated ICU capacity for the region — adjusted based on the percentage of current COVID versus non-COVID ICU patients — dropped to 6.2%
The state’s regional stay-at-home order — which covers Los Angeles County — bars gatherings of people from different households. The state’s full stay-at-home order can be read at: https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/12.3.20-Stay-at-Home-Order-ICU-Scenario.pdf .
The order will remain in effect until at least Dec. 28. Ferrer warned that residents need to adhere to health restrictions, or the situation at hospitals will devolve rapidly.
“Many of us have seen images from other cities and countries of overrun hospitals, exhausted health care workers and critically ill patients being treated in hospital hallways because there are simply no rooms left,” Ferrer said. “This is what we’re working so hard to desperately avoid.”
But she said given the issues with staffing, an extended surge will make it “really hard to keep up with this level of demand without there being the need for there to be additional difficult decisions made by our hospitals around prioritizing some procedures over others.”
“It can unfortunately end up with compromises in care that none of us ever want to experience,” she said. “And we don’t have to. We’re not there yet. The question is can we stop the surge.”
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Loam says
Notice how Dr. Ferrer has no idea what actually caused the increase in cases or how to put rules in place to reduce the spread? Her big idea was to shutdown the outdoor dining but cases still went up over the past two weeks. Now she is just standing around hoping that Christmas season does not get worse?
Her policies have only been fear and scare. She is not proactively doing anything. Who is spreading it? Who is getting it? With thousands upon thousands of cases, you would think they could analyze the data, do contract tracing, and have statistical evidence on how the virus spreads. But, no, all they can do is talk about what they thought it was – the summer weekends, everyone going to the beach, labor day barbeques, the Dodgers and the world series, Thanksgiving, etc. These are all excuses and have no one piece of science behind them.
With months of failure, shouldn’t someone else be put into the position of county health director?????
John Evans says
Well here we are, we have icu beds unstaffed, which means we have more available icu beds than reported. Staffing is a hospital decision based on need. We are in flu season, and in LACounty typical occupancy is 95% for flu season. Which means that if the target is 85% we’ll never be free of Newsom control. See how this works. Further Newsom’s health secretary Mark Ghaly on 12/09 stated that outdoor dining is not a health risk, and that the closures are to keep people home, Hear that?! Do you hear that?! Further the LACounty health department never had any, yes, never had, has or will have any “science” supporting closures for outdoor dining and who knows how honest they’ve been about indoor dining. They lost in Court in Los Angeles Tuesday regarding closing outdoor dining. You’re being lied to by incompetents. So why aren’t you asking why?
John Evans is back but not any better says
John Evans loves being lied to by Trump. Now he is saying we are being lied to by incompentents.
Why is it okay for him to believe lies but no one else?
AV Illegal says
I notice you chose to not refute his facts, only berate him like a true liberal.
So……if the mask work, and they are mandated, why all the huge numbers of cases. I suppose you are still blaming the Sturgis motorcycle rally, or maybe Thanksgiving dinner.
Maybe if this ever ends, we can all wear masks until they get a vaccine for Tuberculosis. I mean after all, it kills about 1.4 million a year.
Strange too, the CV19 vaccine is supposed to be 95% effective, yet the flu vaccine they have had for decades is only a small percentage effective
21 CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the current influenza vaccine has been 45% effective overall against 2019-2020 seasonal influenza A and B viruses. Specifically, the flu vaccine has been 50% effective against influenza B/Victoria viruses and 37% effective against influenza A(H1N1)pdm09.Feb 26, 2020
What a deal…..
John Evans is back but not any better says
AVillgeal.
Facts don’t matter to Trumpers or haven’t you notied that?
Mocking them is the only option. Facts such as Biden got 7 million more votes and 306 in the EC don’t matter to them.
They think Trump won. They bring that ignorance to every issue.
AV Illegal says
It isn’t over until it is over. Mocking or berating someone is not the way, unless of course they see i t differently than you, then shout them into submission.
Biden hides in a basement and gets more votes that any other candidate, even with Trump gaining over 10 mil more votes this time. At some point I think even the idiots will look at it and figure out is is mathematically impossible.
Now…..will the corruption on both sides do anything. No. When the top cop in the nation steps up and says “There isn’t enough election fraud to make a difference”, seemingly acknowledging there was fraud, just not at a big enough level. I feel any fraud is worth prosecuting, not just waiting until it rises to a profound level.
Meanwhile back at the real topic……Why is LA County still out of control. I thought masks, distancing and closing everything down except the big corporate stores (because they donate big) was going to be the answer. Get rid of the small guy, force mandates on everyone and grow corporate America. The plan is working perfectly on both fronts. Election and Government control of your lives.
Loam says
I don’t think even the medical scientists understand what the “95% effective” means. They have not done direct challenge testing and they have no idea how long the resistance to CV19 infection lasts. Six months? Three months? Would human bodies eventually adapt to the mRNA-style vaccine and it would lose its effectiveness? We don’t know.
We have mixed result flue vaccines because the vaccine each year is only effective against some influenza strains and wears off over time. Most of the population does not comprehend what goes into effectiveness metrics for flu vaccines so we live with tens of thousands of people dying of the flu each year despite having vaccines for decades. Society is in for a rude awakening in eight months if they think the CV19 vaccine will end this virus.