Public Health: Hospitalizations, case rates and deaths fall

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Deaths, hospitalizations and COVID-19 case rates have all fallen and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health seems confident this will continue.  

At the Health Department’s weekly press briefing, Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer announced that although transmissions still remain high, Public Health is optimistic about the future. 

“Given the significant decline in cases these past two weeks, and the absence of an increased circulation of a new strain of the virus, we are optimistic that hospitalizations will continue to decline as well in L.A. County over the next two to three weeks,” said Ferrer.  

Hospitalizations have been on the decline for the past three weeks and this week saw a 9% decline. Case rates have also been steadily declining and are now at 3,500 per day, a 7% decrease from last week. There has been a slight decrease in deaths as well, although not as steady as other metrics.  

Since L.A. County’s close brush with moving into the Centers for Disease Control’s “high” tier — almost prompting another indoor mask mandate — the county has been in the “medium” tier for two consecutive weeks and has seen decreases in five of its early alert signals.  

Two early alert signals, however, remain in the “high” category:  the percentage of specimens sequenced that are a variant of concern and the seven-day cumulative age-adjusted case rate for lowest-income areas (30-100% poverty).  

In addition to the COVID-19 briefing, Dr. Muntu Davis, health officer for the Health Department, gave a briefing on the status of Monkeypox in L.A. County, which currently has 971 cases.  

There have been no reported deaths in the county from Monkeypox, but there have been 26 hospitalizations. Ninety-eight percent of cases are in males and 84% are within the LGBTQ community. Currently more than 43,000 doses of the monkeypox vaccine have been received and distributed.  

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