The percentage of COVID-19-positive hospital patients admitted to intensive care units in Los Angeles County is slowly rising, despite suggestions that the omicron variant of the virus causes less severe infections, health officials said today.

According to the county Department of Public Health, average daily hospital admissions of people with COVID are also rising, from 588 per day the week ending Jan. 11 to 644 the week that ended Monday.

During that same period, the percentage of COVID-positive patients admitted to the ICU went from 25% to 31%, and the percentage of patients requiring ventilation jumping from 20% to 27%.

“Let’s not fool ourselves by not recognizing the danger presented by the omicron variant which is capable of spreading with lightning speed and causing serious illness among our most vulnerable residents,” county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said in a statement. “Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have recognized that while many experience mild illness from COVID, there are others, who we love and need, that will not do well if they become infected.

“And while vaccines and boosters provide powerful protection, those who are older, have serious health conditions or are immunocompromised remain at higher risk,” she said. “We still don’t know the longer-term consequences from omicron infections, including the development of long COVID or MIS-C among children.”

According to state figures, there were 4,701 COVID-positive people in county hospitals as of Tuesday, up from 4,564 a day earlier. The number of those patients in the ICU was 680, up from 621 on Monday.

In Long Beach, the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 in the five facilities that serve the city was 367 on Friday, the most recent data available. That number was up from 332 on Thursday, but still well below the peak of hospitalizations on Jan. 12, 2021, which was 581.

While the overall COVID hospitalization number countywide remains below last winter’s peak of more than 8,000, health officials stressed that the rising patient population is creating strain at hospitals that were already coping with staffing shortages. Those shortages have been exacerbated by COVID cases among health care workers, which have also been rising.

Between Jan. 7-13, a total of 1,268 COVID cases were reported among health care workers in the county, a 30% jump from the week of Dec. 31, when 973 were reported, according to the county.

“So please continue to do your part in slowing the spread of omicron to help us keep ourselves and our loved ones healthy and out of the hospital,” Ferrer said.

The county on Tuesday reported 37 additional COVID-related deaths, lifting the overall county death toll from the virus to 28,122. Another 22,688 new infections were also reported, giving the county a pandemic total of2,311,568.

Long Beach reported a huge number of new cases on Friday, 6,910, but officials with the health department said only 877 of those cases were actually new for that day. The rest were part of backlog of cases from previous days.

Because of the backlog, the city’s case rate per 100,000 shot up to 354.1, a huge jump from Thursday’s rate of 238.4. But the city’s positivity rate remained relatively flat from the previous day at 29.8%, likely due to a huge increase in the number of people being tested for COVID-19.

In Los Angeles County, the average daily rate of people testing positive for the virus continued a downward trend Tuesday, falling slightly to 16.3%. That’s down from 16.5% on Monday. The rate was more than 20% a week ago.

A month ago, the testing-positivity rate was just 2%.

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