The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health on Saturday reported that there were nearly 30,000 new positive COVID-19 cases from Christmas and today, and 142 more deaths from the virus.
The numbers today reflect 13,185 cases reported today and 15,538 cases from yesterday along with 131 deaths yesterday and five deaths reported today, the department said in a statement.
The numbers, officials said, are undercount due to reporting lag, as well as a service interruption caused by an outage with Spectrum Service in the Los Angeles area on Friday.
To date, the county has identified 706,448 positive cases and a total of 9,438 deaths. There are currently 6,770 people hospitalized with COVID-19, and 20% of them are in the ICU.
“In order for us to stop the surge, L.A. County residents will need to use the tools at hand to slow community transmission and reduce the number of infected people,” the statement said.
Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer extended the department’s “deepest sympathies” to families grieving the loss of a loved one.
“People mixing with others not in their household has driven the COVID-19 pandemic in L.A. County to the most dangerous levels that we have ever seen,” Ferrer said.
“The overwhelmed hospitals are the saddest proof of this reality. To honor our health care workers and for the safety of your family and friends, please delay travel plans and gather only with members of our household. These actions will save lives,” she said.
The deaths reported do not include Long Beach numbers. The city typically reports its numbers Mondays and Tuesdays from the holiday and weekends.
Meanwhile, a new, more contagious strain of the coronavirus is being reported in Europe. Ferrer said a local laboratory is doing gene sequencing to test virus samples collected in L.A. County, but it will take about a week to finish the process, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.
The new variant was first reported in Great Britain, which has instituted tougher lockdown rules over the past week, but has also been reported in France. It is said to be far more contagious than the original strain of the virus, but has not been found to be more deadly.
Local officials are concerned that if the new strain is already present in Southern California, it could be behind some of the explosive growth in COVID-19 cases seen since the Thanksgiving holiday period.
It is unclear at this point whether the variant would reduce the effectiveness of the two COVID-19 vaccines that have begun circulating, but that is one of the things health officials are studying.