Los Angeles health authority warns of significant COVID-19 metrics rise

LOS ANGELES - The local health authority on Monday warned of significant COVID-19 metrics rises in Los Angeles, as the most populous county in the United States reported more than 12,000 new cases over the past three days.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health confirmed in a press release that the county, home to over 10 million residents, reported 14 additional deaths on Monday, and 5,152, 4,750 and 2,476 new cases on Saturday, Sunday and Monday respectively, bringing the county's accumulative caseload to 2,942,149 and death toll to 32,086.

For sequenced specimens collected in the week ending April 30, all positive cases were Omicron, and the BA.2.12.1 Omicron subvariant, which is more transmissible than BA.2, the current predominant subvariant in LA County, is becoming more common, the department said.

"With increases across multiple COVID metrics, including cases, hospitalizations, outbreaks in high-risk settings, and the test positivity rate, layering in more protections is needed to reduce the risk of transmission and severe illness," said the department.

The average number of daily new cases reported over the last seven days increased to 3,843 compared to 1,436 reported one month ago, an increase of 168 percent, and the seven-day average test positivity rate on Monday is 3 percent, double from what it was one month ago, according to the department.

Officials said the higher case numbers have translated to an increased number of people getting severely ill and needing to be hospitalized, as the average number of COVID-positive patients per day in LA County hospitals over the last seven days was 378, an increase of 72 percent from one month ago.

Barbara Ferrer, the county's director of public health, said in the release that the numbers in LA County are increasing across nearly all of the metrics reflecting "the reality of the dominance of highly infectious mutated variants".

"To protect those who are most vulnerable, we need to take care of each other by creating barriers to the transmission of the virus; this happens when we are up-to-date on vaccinations and boosters, wear a mask when indoors and around others, and get tested to know our status if we feel sick, have been exposed, or are gathering indoors," she added.

The county extended its mask-wearing requirement on public transit and at transportation hubs last weekend amid the latest coronavirus wave.