UPDATED: Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer confirmed today the county is on pace to move into the “high” COVID-19 community level by this Thursday. If the county remains in the “high” level for two consecutive weeks, it will again impose a mandatory indoor mask-wearing mandate. The level is determined by hospitalization rates. According to state figures, there are now 1,153 Covid-positive patients in county hospitals, with 115 of them being treated in intensive care.
On Saturday, L.A. saw its highest number of daily new cases since the original Omicon wave in January at 8,359. One important difference however is that, while the average 7-day test positivity in the county was just under 8.5% at the end of January, today it is close to 15%. The current dominant BA.5 subvariant is also thought to be many times more transmissible than the original Omicon that caused the winter wave.
PREVIOUSLY on July 7: California’s largest county is on course to be labeled a “High” Covid level community in the next seven days. Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said today of that outcome, “I think it’s likely next week.” L.A. would join 35 other of the state’s counties that are already there.
Ferrer based her projection on LACPH modeling of the region’s Covid-related hospitalization rate, which currently sits at 8.4 per 100,000 residents. Once it gets above 10 per 100,000 — as it’s expected to on July 14 — a 14-day timer starts on reimplementing the county’s mandatory indoor masking rule. If the region stays above 10 per 100,000 for 14 days, the mask mandate would go into effect on July 29.
The department’s hospitalization modeling has been fairly accurate over the past few weeks. But it could prove less so in the coming days.
Ferrer repeatedly emphasized that there were reporting delays over the long July 4 weekend, a frequent holiday hangover effect that sees Covid numbers spike across the board as data gathering catches up. There’s also the prospect of spread from gatherings over the holiday, which could reinforce the trend over the next three weeks.
“We’re worried that they will immediately go back up,” Ferrer said of Covid numbers after the holiday, “possibly including more cases from the long weekend.”
Even then, noted Ferrer, “All our cases are an undercount,” since so many Angelenos now use at-home tests, the results of which are not reported officially.
Another accelerant is the rapid spread of the more transmissible BA.5 subvariant which, according to CDC data, accounted for over 60% of new cases last week in the three state region comprised of California, Nevada and Arizona. BA.5 is able to overcome immunity conferred by vaccination and, especially, the immunity that comes as a result of previous infection. BA.5 and its sister Omicron subvariant BA.4 are also thought to cause somewhat more severe illness than their Omicron forbears because they lodge further down into the lungs, instead of up in the nasal passages.
There were 989 Covid-positive patients in local hospitals as of Thursday, up from 920 a day earlier. The number of patients being treated in intensive care was 103, up from 89 on Wednesday.
Ferrer also noted that L.A. has seen a “slight uptick in deaths for the first time since the winter surge.” Daily deaths had held steady for weeks at around 6 or 7 have doubled to 14 and 13 the past few days.
With test positivity now at 16.9% and approaching the county’s all-time record for the pandemic of about 21%, the number of lives lost to the virus is likely to increase significantly as those infections run their courses.
City News Service contributed to this report.