Coronavirus Transmission And Hospitalizations In LA Inch Up

LOS ANGELES, CA — Increased testing in low-income neighborhoods has helped Los Angeles reduce the racial disparity that has left communities of color bearing the brunt of the coronavirus death toll, officials announced Wednesday.

As is always the case with the coronavirus, the latest statistic paint a murky picture of the local outbreak. Los Angeles County recorded another 61 deaths Wednesday, which is much higher than it had been for weeks before the surge. At the same time, the number of new cases and hospitalizations are way down from what they were just few weeks ago. While that trend is promising, county officials are closely watching the transmission rate of the COVID-19, which inched up from last week.

County health services director Dr. Christina Ghaly said that as of Wednesday, the transmission rate of the disease — or the average number of people a coronavirus patients infects with the virus — stood at 0.92, below the goal of 1, but slightly above last week's average of 0.86.

"We will have to watch the data carefully over the next week to know if this small increase ... is in fact significant," Ghaly said. "... If the (rate) is and is able to remain less than one, that means the number of infections and cases will gradually decrease over time."

But with the rate remaining under one, Ghaly said the county should have adequate hospital space and ventilators over the coming weeks.

Ghaly also acknowledged that parents are anxious to have children return to in-person classes at schools, but said it is still too soon to reopen campuses.

"L.A. County is reporting ... that COVID-19 cases among children and young adults have crept up slightly, though the range in severity of cases varies widely from mild to severe," she said. "This should serve as a reminder to everybody that COVID can infect anyone. No one is not susceptible to this virus no matter what your age and regardless of whether or not you have underlying health conditions."

County Department of Public Health director Barbara Ferrer Wednesday announced 1,956 new cases — which included about 100 positive results from a statewide reporting backlog and "a few hundred" from a large testing lab that provided delayed results from earlier in the week. Long Beach, meanwhile, reported another 83 cases. The new cases lifted the total number since the start of the pandemic to 225,910.

Ferrer said 1,378 people were hospitalized due to COVID-19 on Wednesday, a slight uptick from Tuesday. The number of hospitalizations has been trending downward in recent weeks, though health officials said the decline has leveled off in recent days. But the number is still well below the roughly 2,200 hospital patients seen in mid-July.

Ferrer walked through a series of statistics showing continued disparate impacts throughout the pandemic on Latino/a, Black and Native Hawaiian-Pacific Islander residents, and also among lower-income residents.

She said recent numbers show that some progress is being made in closing the gap among ethnic groups, both in terms of new cases and deaths.

"All of this shows that we are slightly narrowing the gap for the populations that have really been the hardest hit," Ferrer said.

"... We do have a long way to go, as you've seen, to reduce and eliminate the gaps that we've seen in COVID-19 health outcomes. But as I've noted, we've started to see some progress," Ferrer said. "... I do think that testing and access to testing is one of the areas that I would estimate at this point has some responsibility for narrowing the gap because it allows people to be identified early on as being positive and they're able to isolate and their close contacts are able to quarantine, which reduces community transmission as well as then further reduces transmission that may happen at workplaces."

She also credited the work of business owners to ensure they are meeting health protocols. She noted that health inspectors have roughly tripled their workload from March to July, responding to complaints in addition to their normal business visits. And while those inspections have increased, businesses have generally shown increasing levels of compliance.

"Businesses do play a really important role in slowing the spread, and the actions and policies that are adhered to at a business site can have enormous impact on being able to the slow the spread both in our community and preventing outbreaks at worksites," she said.

City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.