South African And Brazilian COVID Variants Emerge In LA County

LOS ANGELES, CA — Los Angeles County confirmed its first cases of the South African and Brazilian variants of the coronavirus Wednesday. The two "variants of concern" emerged as the decline in new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations appears to be leveling off.

Even as the new variants were confirmed, scientists reported promising findings that the vaccines appear to work against the West Coast variant, which drove the winter surge. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded that vaccines are working against the strain that has been dominant in Los Angeles County for months.

The vaccines have likely helped Angelenos succeed in slowing the outbreak enough that the number of new cases remains relatively low. And every month, more and more people become eligible for the vaccine. The rapid decline in cases — an 82 percent drop in February and a 42 percent drop in March — has helped the county to so far avoid the spring surge affecting other parts of the country, the county's public health director said Wednesday.

"While all of our metrics are indicating less community transmission, the rate of decrease is slowing for hospitalizations and cases," LA County's public health director Barbara Ferrer told reporters Wednesday.

However, she noted Wednesday,"our case numbers stopped significantly declining altogether," Ferrer said.

The decline in daily hospitalizations has also slowed, but the number of daily COVID-19 deaths continues to drop significantly, providing relief to a healthcare system that was overwhelmed throughout the winter.

Whether the slowing pace of improvements in case numbers and hospitalizations are a cause of concern is yet to be seen.

Elsewhere around the nation, coronavirus case rates are increasing. The timing is unfortunate because spring break travelers to Los Angeles risk bringing the infection with them, including variants considered more contagious and more deadly. Ferrer on Wednesday confirmed the county's first case of a variant first detected in South Africa, and three cases of a Brazilian P.1 variant. Both are labeled "variants of concern" by federal health officials due to their ease of spread from person to person.

Ferer warned that both variants are likely circulating in the community. Given the limited amount of testing the county conducts to identify variants, the discovery of the new strains in such a small testing sample means "it is likely there are additional undetected and undiagnosed cases," Ferrer said.

Ferrer said the increasing number of variants and the slowing decline in new cases and hospitalizations should serve as a warning for residents not to let their guard down, even as more business restrictions are being eased. She said people need to continue practicing infection-control measures, and get vaccinated when they can.

"We're not more than three weeks out from when we moved into the red tier, and we've not seen any increases in our case rates, test positivity rates or hospitalizations," she said. "This is only possible because of our collective commitment to each other. So please continue keeping yourself, your friends and your family safe."

On Tuesday the state released its updated county-by-county COVID statistics, showing Los Angeles County's average daily rate of new cases holding steady at 3.1 per 100,000 residents, ending a weeks-long downward trend.

Maintaining the 3.1 rate slowed the county's march toward the less- restrictive yellow tier of the state's Blueprint for a Safer Economy. The county advanced to the orange tier last week, allowing for an easing of capacity limits and reopening of more business sectors, but will now be unable to reach the yellow tier for at least three weeks, and likely longer.

"I think with the case rate as low as it is ... and the test positivity rate being under 2%, we've really reduced significantly community transmission," Ferrer said. "I think the question for all of us is, we could reduce it more -- and it would be better if we reduced it more. We still have moderate transmission. That's why we're in the orange tier. It would be lovely to get to the yellow tier, which really means we have minimal transmission going on in the community because your case rate has dropped to less than 2 per 100,000 people.

"Yes, I would like to see our case rate drop more. We'll have to continue to work really hard for that to happen because we have a lot of reopenings, we have a lot of travel, a fair amount of gatherings, I think, over the holiday," she said. "And hopefully people have been doing this with all of the safety precautions so that we continue on this road to reducing, continuing to be able to reduce transmission. Obviously, we can get our rate lower. There's no impossibility on this."

Ferrer announced another 53 COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday, while Long Beach health officials added one and Pasadena reported three, increasing the countywide total since the start of the pandemic to 23,344.

She also reported 479 new infections, while Long Beach announced 28 and Pasadena three, giving the county an overall total from throughout the pandemic of 1,223,205.

According to state figures, there were 572 people hospitalized due to COVID in Los Angeles County as of Wednesday, up from 552 on Tuesday. There were 136 people in intensive care, a drop from 138 on Tuesday.

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