Warning that COVID-19 has been linked to a host of potentially long-term health effects, Los Angeles County’s chief medical officer said today people shouldn’t be fooled into thinking the illness is a “simple disease” with minimal impacts on the bulk of its victims.
“Any and all notions that COVID-19 is a relatively simple disease in which a small percentage of persons suffer severe consequences and the rest quickly recover must be dismissed,” Dr. Jeffrey Gunzenhauser told reporters during an online media briefing. “This simply is not the case. What we are seeing is that this is an infection that affects health in many ways, including what appear to be many long-term health consequences.”
Gunzenhauser walked through a litany of health issues that have been linked to the coronavirus, while noting that studies are continuing and experts are still learning about how the virus can impact a variety of bodily functions.
His warnings came on a day that saw another upward spike in daily coronavirus case numbers in the county. The Department of Public Health reported 1,745 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, the highest single-day number since late August that did not involve a backlog in testing results.
Health officials said this week that the county’s average daily number of new cases has been on the rise all month, going from an average of about 940 per day in early October to nearly 1,200 in recent days.
That increase is sinking the county further into the mud of the most restrictive “purple” tier in the state’s coronavirus economic-reopening matrix. Until the daily case numbers drop to a steady average of about 700 per day, the county will be unable to substantially lift business restrictions or allow school campuses to reopen.
The new cases reported by the county, along with 37 announced by Long Beach health officials and 18 by Pasadena, lifted the countywide cumulative total since the start of the pandemic to 305,125.
Los Angeles County also announced another 19 coronavirus-related deaths, lifting the death toll to 7,044.
There were 750 people hospitalized as of Thursday, down slightly from 755 on Wednesday.