COVID-19 catches 9 to 10 people in most populous US county every minute: officials

LOS ANGELES - On average, nine to 10 people in Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the United States, currently test positive for COVID-19 every minute, local health officials said Monday.

The county's Department of Public Health reported 13,661 new COVID-19 infections and 73 more deaths in a daily release, pushing its cumulative cases up to 733,325 with 9,555 related deaths, while officials estimated there were delayed reportings of additional 432 deaths due to outages and the holiday weekend.

Los Angeles County recently has been recording its caseload over 13,000 a day, with some days over 15,000, while it just saw an average of about 1,200 cases some days before the current surge began 58 days ago, said the department.

There are 6,914 COVID-19 patients currently hospitalized in the county, with 20 percent of them in the intensive care unit.

Since Nov 9, average daily hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients have increased by more than 670 percent, and average daily deaths have increased 600 percent, from 12 a day in early-November to 84 a day in mid-December, according to the department.