Los Angeles–The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (Public Health) expressed cautious optimism today that community spread of COVID-19 in L.A. County has slowed and that other key indicators are stabilizing.
The positive trends can be attributed to a variety of things, including the decreased opportunities for transmission, particularly in high-risk settings. Several weeks ago, bars were closed, and the indoor operations of a variety of businesses and institutions were moved outdoors.
Today’s 7-day average of cases is around 2,600 cases per day. This is down from a couple weeks ago where the county was seeing over 3,000 cases per day. The 7-day positivity rate has remained mostly flat over the month of July, hovering between 8 and 8.8 percent. And finally, hospitalizations, which is a key indicator of health system capacity, is on a positive trend with 2,000 hospitalizations on average. This number had ticked up to 2,200 in the middle of July. Although all of these key indicators are still too high, the plateauing of the trends is encouraging.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (Public Health) has confirmed 12 new deaths and 1,634 new cases of COVID-19. To date, Public Health has identified 193,788 positive cases of COVID-19 across all areas of L.A. County, and a total of 4,701 deaths. Upon further investigation, 13 cases and three deaths reported earlier were not L.A. County residents.
There are 1,784 people with confirmed cases of COVID-19 currently hospitalized. Of hospitalized patients, 30% are in the ICU and 18% are currently ventilated.
Of the 11 new deaths reported today (excluding Long Beach and Pasadena), two people that passed away were over the age of 80, four people who died were between the ages of 65 and 79 years old, three people who died were between the ages of 50 and 64 years old and two people who died were between the ages of 30 and 49 years old. Eight people had underlying health conditions including two people over the age of 80 years old, two people between the ages of 65 and 79 years old, two people between the ages of 50 and 64 years old and two people between the ages of 30 and 49 years old.
Ninety-two percent of the people who died from COVID-19 had underlying health conditions. Of those who died, information about race and ethnicity is available for 4,407 people (99 percent of the cases reported by Public Health); 48% of deaths occurred among Latino/Latinx residents, 25% among White residents, 15% among Asian residents, 11% among African American/Black residents, less than 1% among Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander residents and 1% among residents identifying with other races.
Testing results are available for 1,804,698 individuals with 10% of all people testing positive.
