Los Angeles County continues to be one of several counties in California being closely monitored during the reopening process, as its coronavirus data did not meet the threshold, Gov. Gavin Newsom said during a Monday briefing.
“We’ve been monitoring, as we said last week, all 58 counties in this state,” Newsom said. “Last week … we were focused on 13 counties in particular that required not just monitoring, but some technical assistance.”
Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of California Health and Human Services, said there are 11 counties that had three consecutive days of concern due to elevated data in one or more of the following three areas: elevated disease transmission, increasing hospitalization or limited hospital capacity.
For L.A. County, it was again the elevated disease transmission that was of concern, with county figures showing 171.9 cases per 100,000 population, an increase from last week, which showed 162.5 cases per 100,000. This is far greater than the 25 cases per 100,000 population threshold for the state.
“(We) continue (to) focus on Los Angeles County, where despite a good job in maintaining their hospital capacity (and) doing quite a bit of testing, we still have a very high case rate, which we watch closely because of the dense population in Los Angeles County,” Ghaly said.
This does not mean the county will be barred from continuing the reopening process, but that state officials are going to continue having frequent conversations with county partners, according to state officials.
This comes as California is starting to see a slight uptick in the positivity rates, from 4.5% to 4.8% statewide over a 14-day period, Newsom said.
