Los Angeles County Department of Public Health officials announced Thursday 33 new COVID-19 cases in the Santa Clarita Valley and 1,777 countywide for a total of 3,498 and 124,738, respectively.
A total of 50 new deaths related to COVID-19 were reported Thursday across the county, which brought the overall tally to 3,689. In the SCV one new death was reported, for a death toll of 37. On Wednesday, two additional deaths had been reported.
Since the start of the pandemic, more than 1.24 million people have been tested countywide, with 9% of all individuals testing positive. The daily positivity rate is 9.2%, according to Public Health data.
“I want to note that our positivity rates are up, hospitalization rates are up and our death rates are up as we had anticipated continuing to see during these next two weeks,” said Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer, adding that a total of 2,037 people were hospitalized, with 26% of them in the ICU and 17% on ventilators.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti had warned Wednesday of a possible lockdown return if cases continued to hike and when asked Thursday whether that would be the case countywide, Ferrer said during a conference with the media that “nothing can be off the table in the pandemic.”
“There’s just too much unknown and there’s lots of things that could happen that would put us in much worse shape, including some serious mutations of this virus that make it more dangerous so I would never be the person that’s going to say, ‘No, absolutely out of the question. We can never go back to safer-at-home,’ because there’s just too much unknown here,” she said.
In the Santa Clarita Valley, new cases were tallied to lists attributed to the city of Santa Clarita, Acton, Canyon Country, Saugus and Castaic, where most of the cases stem from an outbreak at the Pitchess Detention Center.
Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital on Wednesday released its weekly tallies, showing that more than 660 tests have been conducted over the past week for a total of 3,936 since the start of the pandemic. Of that total figure, 415 returned positive and 3,671 negatives, while 407 remain pending, according to spokesman Patrick Moody. A total of 132 people have recovered and 11 remained at the hospital — a decrease of eight over the last seven days.
The number of SCV cases, including all area health care providers’ daily figures and those at Pitchess Detention Center, broken down into region, were as follows as of Thursday:
City of Santa Clarita: 1,445
Unincorporated – Acton: 33
Unincorporated – Agua Dulce: 16
Unincorporated – Bouquet Canyon: 1
Unincorporated – Canyon Country: 52
Unincorporated – Castaic: 1,813 (majority of Castaic cases come from Pitchess Detention Center, exact number unavailable)
Unincorporated – Lake Hughes: 1
Unincorporated – Newhall: 3
Unincorporated – Placerita Canyon: 0
Unincorporated – San Francisquito Canyon/Bouquet Canyon: 0
Unincorporated – Sand Canyon: 1
Unincorporated – Saugus: 7
Unincorporated – Saugus/Canyon Country: 0
Unincorporated – Stevenson Ranch: 77
Unincorporated – Val Verde: 34
Unincorporated – Valencia: 15
To view all coronavirus-related stories, visit signalscv.com/category/news/coronavirus.
