More than 3,000 new COVID-19 infections were reported in Los Angeles County Friday, the first time since Feb. 13 the number has topped that level.
The 3,058 new cases reported Friday lifted the cumulative total from throughout the pandemic to 1,279,171. More than 10,000 new cases have been reported in the last four days, with the daily number topping 2,500 for three consecutive days.
Health officials have repeatedly blamed the current surge in cases on the highly infectious “Delta” variant of the virus. The variant was first discovered in India and is blamed for rampant infections in that country, along with outbreaks in the United Kingdom. It is now spreading across the United States, contributing to rising case numbers and hospitalizations.
According to state figures, there were 688 people hospitalized in Los Angeles County due to COVID as of Friday, up from 655 on Thursday and the highest number since late March. There were 146 people in intensive care, down slightly from 148 on Thursday. The average daily rate of people testing positive for the virus was 5.2% on Friday, roughly the same as Thursday. The rate one month ago was 0.7%. Another seven COVID deaths were reported by the county Friday, lifting the overall death toll to 24,614.
The county Department of Public Health noted that unvaccinated people are becoming infected at five times the rate of transmission from just one month ago.
Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer released figures Thursday showing that fully vaccinated people are also not immune from contracting the virus — representing 20% of all infections during June. But she stressed that thanks to the vaccines, the vast majority of those people are not becoming severely ill or hospitalized. And she said without the vaccines, the situation would be much worse.
“If we didn’t have 5.3 million people fully vaccinated in L.A. County, we would probably be seeing almost double the number of cases today,” Ferrer said in a statement Friday. “As cases continue to rise, many of us are trying to figure out what steps to take to minimize exposure to the virus. For those eligible and not yet vaccinated, now would be an important time to get your vaccine because our three vaccines all offer a lot of protection to the vaccinated person and also slow down the spread.”
County figures released Thursday showed that among roughly 4.85 million fully vaccinated residents from Jan. 19 through Tuesday, only 6,520 tested positive for the virus, for a rate of 0.13%. That’s up from a rate of 0.09% last week.
Of the fully vaccinated people in that period who tested positive, only 287 were hospitalized, for a rate of 0.0059% of the vaccinated population, up from 0.0045% last week. There were 30 vaccinated people who died, a rate of 0.0006%.
The most recent figures provided by the county Thursday show that 5.3 million of the county’s roughly 10.3 million residents are fully vaccinated, a rate of roughly 52%. About 1.3 million county residents are ineligible for shots because they are under age 12.
Ferrer stressed the protection offered by the vaccines, despite the increasing numbers of vaccinated people becoming infected, comparing their effectiveness to a car’s seat belt.
“While seat belts don’t prevent every bad thing that can happen during a car accident, they do provide excellent protection, so much so that we all use them routinely,” she said. “It wouldn’t really make sense to not use a seat belt just because it doesn’t prevent all injuries from car accidents. Rejecting a COVID vaccine because they don’t offer 100% protection really ignores the powerful benefits we’ve experienced from those people who have gotten vaccinated.”
Young Black and Latino residents continue to have the lowest rates of vaccination in the county.
Black residents also had the highest rate of new infections over the last month, at 181 per 100,000 residents. Latino/a residents have traditionally had one of the highest infections rates throughout the pandemic, but over the past month, white residents accrued a higher rate, at 83 per 100,000 residents. Latinos had an infection rate of 62 per 100,000 residents.
Black residents also had the highest rate of hospitalizations over the month, followed by Latinos and whites.
In hopes of encouraging more people to get vaccinated, the county is continuing to offer incentives. Through next Thursday, anyone who gets vaccinated at sites operated by the county, the city of Los Angeles or St. John’s Well Child and Family Center will be entered for a chance to win one of seven three-concert ticket packages at AEG venues, for a variety of acts.
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Loampounder says
Another example of the state’s failure to deal with the pandemic. They just stand around and have press conferences, doing the same thing month after month. 15 months after the pandemic hit our state and all they can do is talk about masks???
Tim Scott says
What would you call “dealing with the pandemic effectively”?
Mortality rate in California has been very low, compared to other comparable states. We never really hit the “okay, out of intensive care beds and equipment, time to tell people just go home and die” stage that most states/countries with major urban centers did. We don’t have lingering questions about having had to run our statistics through a political office that health officials say “massaged” the data to make it look like we did a better job than we did.
Would it have been great if the entire response, top to bottom, had been a lot better organized? Sure, but when the president was on TV every day saying “ignore your public health officials, this will just magically go away” that was not a possibility. Would it have been great if there just were no such thing as diseases? Of course, but that isn’t reality either. So here we are, doing as best we can figure out on the fly, and overall getting better results than most.
So sit down, mask up, get vaxxed, and zip it.
Nathan says
Tune in to channel 2, 4, 5 or 7 for your news? You’d believe Bejing-Biden actually won the election, that coronavirus was cooked up by whack-out Chinese chefs making bat stew, that the smartest, most wonderful guy in the whole world is Hunter Biden, that Nancy Pelosi is the most popular person in America. Insurmountable problem, FBI, CIA and NSAs’ subversion our mainstream media.
ACE says
REMEMBER HOW NOTHING WAS DONE TO KEEP OUT THE COVID-19..?
AND HOW NOTHING WAS DONE TO PROTECT SENIORS IN REST HOMES EVEN THOUGH THEY KNEW THE COVID-19 ATTACKED SENIORS THE MOST..?
ALL WE HAD TO DO, THEY REPEATED ENDLESSLY WAS WASH OUR HANDS A LOT AND DISINFECT SURFACES WHERE THE COVID COULD LIVE A LONG TIME..?
MASKS WERE NOT NEEDED SO THEY COULD SAVE THEM FOR THE HOSPITALS AND NURSES..?
AND THE COVID-19 CAME FROM CHINESE PEOPLE EATING BAT SOUP..?
LATER THIS CHANGED TO REPEATED MEDIA EXHORTATIONS TO GET TESTED EVEN THROUGH THE TEST RESULTS WERE ONLY 50-50 CORRECT..?
THEN CAME THE LOCK DOWNS AND MANDATORY MASKS…
NO ONE KNEW WHAT THE DIFFERENCE IN THE THREE COVID–19 VACCINES WERE OR WHAT WAS IN THEM BUT WE ALL HAD TO GET THEM AND THEY WERE ABSOLUTELY SAFE…
NO SIDE EFFECTS…
THEN PEOPLE STARTING DYING FROM SIDE EFFECTS…
WARNINGS WERE ISSUED…
***
LOOK HOW THEY AGAIN DID NOTHING TO KEEP OUT THE NEW INDIA MUTATION..?
AND NOW EVEN THOSE FULLY VACCINATED MUST ALSO STILL WEAR MASKS AND ARE CONTAGIOUS WITHOUT SYMPTOMS…
THAT IT NOW MOSTLY TARGETS YOUNG PEOPLE…
***
THEN THE FULLY VACCINATED STARTED GETTING THE NEW INDIAN MUTATION AND GOING TO THE HOSPITAL AND DYING…
IGNORING AND NEVER MENTIONING THAT THE ORIGINAL VIRUS CHOSEN BY THE RED CHINESE GERM WARFARE EXPERIMENTERS IN WUHAN…
TO BE WEAPONIZED IN WUHAN, WAS THE EVER MUTATING COROLLA COMMON COLD VIRUS…
MADE SMALLER TO SUSPEND IN THE WIR LONGER AND BE MORE INFECTIVE…
THAT IT WOULD CONTINUE MUTATING AND THEREFORE BE RESISTANT TO VACCINES JUST LIKE THE COMMON COLD HAS PROVEN TO BE…
NOW WE ARE HEARING OVER AND OVER THAT ONLY THOSE UNVACCINATED ARE DYING AND GETTING REALLY SICK FOR THE NEW MUTATION…
ITS THEIR FAULT FOR NOT GETTING VACCINATED AND THEY MUST BE PUNISHED, SHUNNED, KEPT FROM WORKING AND BE FORCED TO GET VACCINATED…
OR WE ARE ALL AT GREATER RISK…
ITS ALL CRAP FOLKS…
BASED ON VACCINES THAT DON’T WORK BUT THE MEDIA AND OUR LEADERS WONT YET ADMIT IT…
JUST KEEP FOOLING THE PEOPLE BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL STUPID AND WILL RIOT OR SOMETHING…
OUR LEADERS AND OUR MEDIA KNOW WHAT’S BEST FOR US ALL FOLKS…
THEY ARE MUCH BETTER AND SMARTER AND THAT’S WHY THEY ARE OUR LEADERS AND OUR MEDIA…
***
SO PUT THE MASKS THAT DON’T WORK BACK ON, WAS YOUR HANDS A LOT AND GET VACCINATED AS A BOOSTER MAYBE…
***
I WONDER WHAT’S NEXT FROM THEM…
DO YOU TOO..?
TOO BAD THEY HAVE PROVEN HOW UNBELIEVABLE AND CORRUPT THEY REALLY ARE…
MAYBE IF EVERYONE WOULD ALL TOGETHER PAT THEIR HEADS AND RUB THEIR TUMMIES AT THE SAME TIME..?
THE BAD VIRUS THAT WASN’T A PURPOSEFUL ACT OF WAR WHEN RELEASED ON TROOP SURROUNDED FIRST WUHAN…
AND THEN LATER ON THE NEW DELTA VARIANT WAS RELEASED ON RED CHINA’S BIGGEST CURRENT ENEMY AND BORDER FIGHTING NEIGHBOR, INDIA…
DON’T YOU ALSO WISH THAT THIS COVID BUSINESS WOULD JUST GO AWAY..?
AND WE COULD ALL GO BACK TO LIVING HAPPILY EVER AFTER…?
Tim Scott says
I think that statistic is misleading in itself. If you ask the question “is the news you get from the main network news sources accurate?” almost everyone will say “no,” or at least “not always.” I would certainly say not always because “main network news sources” includes Fox, and Fox lies constantly. I suspect everyone with a brain will answer the same as me for that reason.
Then, the Trump infested Republicans will say no, for sure, because Trump has lead them into a world of “alternative facts” where basically they just call anything they don’t like ‘fake news.’ So that’s going to give you the result that is probably what you are referring to there.
By the way, I seriously doubt it is accurate to say that anyone “doesn’t believe a single thing they see or read.” There’s a lot of lies, but even Fox throws in something true now and then.
I have to ask, what prompts this response here? This particular article is pretty much bald numerical facts, relayed from the county health department. Seems like an odd place to beat the “bias in journalism” drums.
Terry says
Can you put in your article stats on the AV and COVID 19. Lancaster and palmdale. New positive and so on. Thanks
Stinger says
I concur.
Tim Scott says
FWIW I searched pretty hard through the county health department website where the information comes from and did not see any way to break that data out. A request from a media organization, like the AV Times, may get them to provide it, but I think that’s the only way to get it.