On Wednesday, Los Angeles County reported more than 4,000 new daily Covid cases for the first time since January. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health confirmed 4,046 new cases of Covid-19 and 34 new deaths. New Covid cases in Los Angeles have been ranging a few hundred above and below the 3,000 mark for more than a week.
Orange County also saw a big jump in new cases.
Officials there reported 1,213 new coronavirus infections today, nearly double the number logged Tuesday. Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, deputy health officer for the Orange County Health Care Agency, cautioned against reading too much into the infection rate on a call with reporters sponsored by Supervisor Katrina Foley, who has been providing daily updates on the Delta surge.
“Unfortunately today it’s high,” Chinsio-Kwong said of the infections logged Wednesday.
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When Foley asked her if contact tracing indicates where the infections are concentrated, Chinsio-Kwong said, “It’s pretty much all over the place.”
She added, “We see ebbs and flows. We have to wait and see if it’s really a pattern or if it’s just the database ebb and flow…It takes weeks to see a trend. That’s what we see on a national level.”
Last week, Los Angeles Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer said she anticipated cases to rise. “One issue that’s going to confound our case numbers is that our testing is going to be increasing dramatically,” she predicted as kids going back to school and adults going back into the office get tested.
In Los Angeles, were are 1,754 people with Covid-19 currently hospitalized and 23% of these people were in the ICU. Testing results are available for nearly 7,830,000 individuals with 16% of people testing positive. Today’s test positivity rate is 3.6%, up slightly from 3.5% on Tuesday.
Hospitalizations in Orange County increased from 549 on Tuesday to 568, with the number of intensive care unit patients dipping from 126 to 125.
City News Service contributed to this report.