Hospitalization numbers in Los Angeles County continue to trend downward, and four-week projections now indicate ICU capacity will rise above the 15% threshold, even though the current regional capacity is still listed at 0%.
Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, said Tuesday that the county’s COVID-19 numbers have been improving dramatically throughout January, saying the average number of new cases has dropped from about 15,000 per day to about 7,000 per day. She said hospitalizations have dropped from 8,000 per day about 6,000 per day.
The only metric that has remained elevated is deaths, with the county last week averaging 213 fatalities from COVID-19 per day. Ferrer noted that the deaths are always a lagging statistic that follow rising case and hospitalization numbers, so fatalities are likely to remain high through the rest of the month thanks to the December surge in cases.
“We’re still going to see high numbers of deaths for a couple of weeks to come, but I’m hoping that once we get into the month of February our death rates will also come down significantly,” she said.
The county reported 291 COVID-19 deaths Tuesday, lifting the countywide total from throughout the pandemic to 15,592.
The county announced 5,927 new COVID-19 cases, pushing the overall pandemic total to 1,085,044.
According to state figures, there were 6,213 people hospitalized in the county due to COVID-19 as of Tuesday, including 1,551 people in intensive care. The county has roughly 2,500 licensed ICU beds.
The county Department of Health Services on Tuesday reported 762 available hospital beds at the 70 “911- receiving” hospitals with emergency departments, including 90 ICU beds.
In the week that ended Saturday, an average of 82% of ICU patients in the county were being treated for COVID-19, along with 49% of people in non-ICU beds.
The news came on the one-year anniversary of the county’s first coronavirus case, and the first day that businesses such as barber shops and nail salons could reopen operations indoors.
But officials said COVID-19 remains rampant.
“This would not be the time for people to think that because we’re reopening, things are looking rosy here in L.A. County,” Ferrer told the county Board of Supervisors. “We still have a lot of people in our hospitals. We still have a lot of people passing infections from themselves to others. Many of them are asymptomatic. And unfortunately we’ll see a lot more people die over the next few weeks. So we’re going to have to ask everyone to really stay with this program.”
Ferrer said the county will have its inspectors out in force, prepared to issue citations to reopening businesses that aren’t following restrictions, such as capacity limits and face-covering requirements.