COVID-19, the disease everyone wants to forget, popped back into the local consciousness this week with an exposure at the Tuesday Council meeting and while experts still urge symptomatic individuals to quarantine, the County’s overall Covid picture is vastly better than it has been in recent history.
According to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health for the past three summers, Los Angeles County has experienced a summer COVID-19 surge. Those spikes have been sudden or gradual but either way, they’ve traditionally been visible by this point in the year.
There are signs of an increase this year, but the scale is radically less than in prior years.
This week, Public Health reported a 32 percent increase in new cases but that only amounts to about 500 cases total. Tracking of the virus concentration in wastewater has shown a small increase from 8 percent over the past three weeks to 10 percent this year. The test positivity rate, which does not include home tests, increased to 7.5 percent up from 5.1 percent one month earlier.
While there has been a small uptick that experts said may be a result of July 4 celebrations and hot weather keeping more people inside in close quarters, hospitalization levels for COVID-19 are the lowest recorded since the beginning of the pandemic. Just over 200 people are hospitalized per week countywide and only 3 percent of all admissions are people under 18 years old.
Many of the current outbreaks are actually in skilled nursing facilities, where residents are more susceptible to severe illness and death from COVID-19. Those outbreaks have tripled in recent weeks from four at the end of June to 11 and 12 in the past two weeks. The vast majority of deaths, roughly 70% are in people over 65 years old.
In Santa Monica, an individual that attended the City Council meeting this week reported they had tested positive for COVID-19 in the subsequent days.
Individuals who attended the meeting are recommended to monitor for symptoms and if they do develop, self isolate. Self testing is recommended from 3 - 5 days after the contact and mask wearing is recommended when indoors and around others for 10 days.
MATTHEW HALL
Daily Press Editor
