Los Angeles County inn Friday reported 1,107 new Covid-19 infections, double the number it reported a week ago and the county’s highest daily figure since March. Those higher cases counts are being detected despite a big fall in testing since the start of the year.
There are 320 people with COVID-19 currently hospitalized; an increase from the 280 hospitalizations reported last Friday. The county is also reporting five more Covid deaths, for a pandemic total of 24,530.
One of the more trusted numbers, the 7 day average daily test positivity rate, was 2.4% on Friday, a jump from last Friday’s rate of 1.5%. The rolling average number of daily new infections in the county rose to 3.47 per 100,000 residents as of Thursday, roughly double the 1.74 per 100,000 rate of last week.
Both of those data points were key measures on California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy, which dictated the level of reopening allowed in the state’s counties. That framework was scrapped when the state reopened in mid-June, but if it were still in place, Los Angeles’s current numbers would force it backward out of the most permissive “Minimal” tier to a more restrictive “Moderate” infection status.
The state as a whole is would also be in a more restrictive tier by now. It saw 2,411 new infections recorded on Friday. That’s up over 1,000 new cases in 24 hours. Thursday’s number of new infections The number of daily reported cases was just over 1,400 on Thursday. The 7-day average is 3.3 cases per 100K. The 7-day positivity rate is 2.3%. On June 15, when the Covid restrictions were lifted statewide, that number was .9%.
Also this week, the number of Delta variant cases identified in the state grew 71%, making it the dominant variant in California.