Coronavirus Claims A Second Child In Los Angeles County

LOS ANGELES, CA — Los Angeles is trending in the right direction as coronavirus cases rapidly decline. But as Angelenos celebrate the reopening of their favorite gyms, restaurants and theaters, county health officials continue to worry that another surge could sneak up. The death of a child infected with the COVID-19 this week serves as a reminder of the very real threat the coronavirus continues to pose.

Los Angeles paid a huge price in lives lost to get to this point, said Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer. New cases are dropping, but the county's transmission rate has begun creeping up. Though the daily caseload over the past two weeks is just a fraction of what it was during the winter peak, it was still as high as it was through much of the summer.

On Wednesday, Los Angeles County health officials reported another 75 deaths, including one child. Juvenile COVID-19 fatalities are rare. Los Angeles lost one child to the disease in March of last year, and another who died from a rare inflammatory disease that sometimes afflicts children after they recover from the coronavirus. The child, who died this week, had an underlying health condition, the nature of which was not immediately known.

"I am relieved that we're in our recovery where more and more people are being vaccinated and cases, hospitalizations and deaths continue to decrease," Barbara Ferrer told reporters during an online briefing. "But it has come at a huge price. And I know there are many like me remembering what we've been through and how the lives of so many have been forever changed by this pandemic. These memories ought to remind us that we owe it to ourselves and to our community to get to the other side of this pandemic, being as careful as we can to prevent more illness and death."

Ferrer said she is closely watching the county's COVID-19 transmission rate, which has begun to tick upwards. It remains below 1.0, which means that each infected person is spreading it to less than one other person. As long as the rate remains below 1.0, cases will continue to drop, if not as quickly as before. The COVID transmission rate rose slightly in the past week from 0.79 to 0.87.

"We're public health. We always worry about cases going back up," Ferrer said.

"We're going to worry until we get to a place where we have the vast majority of people here in L.A. County vaccinated," Ferrer said. "... We do know what steps we can take absent getting vaccinated to protect each other. Nothing has changed on that and the need to do it hasn't changed either.

"... But yes, we're going to worry and continue to ask people to help us by making sure that we in fact don't have any of that `creep up' as you noted," she said. "We need to continue to keep case numbers low. Also it's in everyone's best interest. Lots of people are talking to me about, you know, `I'm so excited, maybe we're going to get to the orange tier soon.' And yes, maybe we are, but we get there together by playing by the rules."

Los Angeles County this week moved from the state's most-restrictive purple tier of the Blueprint for a Safer Economy, which governs the reopening of businesses and activities during the pandemic. The county is now in the less- restrictive red tier, but if case numbers continue trending downward, it could advance to the orange tier by early April, allowing more capacity at businesses and potentially reopening bars for outdoor service.

The county also reported another 897 confirmed cases of COVID-19, raising the cumulative total since the pandemic began to 1,211,733.

According to state figures, there were 861 people hospitalized in the county as of Wednesday, with 225 people in intensive care units. The overall number actually reflected a slight increase from Tuesday, when 857 people were hospitalized.

Ferrer touted the ongoing vaccination efforts, saying the county is administering 94% of the doses it receives within seven days, a statistic she called "extraordinary."

She outlined plummeting infection numbers among health care workers and residents and staff at skilled nursing facilities — the first groups of people who were eligible for the vaccines. She said the sharp drops in cases are clear evidence of the effectiveness of the vaccines.

Ferrer acknowledged the possibility of people trying to "jump the line" and get vaccinated before they are eligible, particularly with shots now available to people who self-attest at a vaccination site that they have a qualifying underlying health condition. But she said health officials "remain hopeful that everyone again is waiting their turn."

"Our experience is there are always a few people that are trying to jump the line, but the vast majority of people in fact are playing by the rules," she said.

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