Coronavirus transmission has been slowly, but steadily, on the rise in recent weeks — and though local public health officials say the most recently available data doesn’t yet indicate a surge akin to the spike in cases seen last winter, they are urging members of the public to take basic safety precautions ahead of the fall flu and back to school seasons.
The number of reported COVID-19 infections has nearly doubled in Los Angeles County over the past month, according to Department of Public Health director Barbara Ferrer, who held a press briefing on Thursday, Aug. 31, with virus-related hospitalizations following suit in recent weeks.
There were about 571 coronavirus cases reported this week, Ferrer said Thursday, up from about 264 reported in early August. Those numbers, though, are likely undercount since they don’t include the results from home tests.
“And while case numbers are relatively low compared to many other points this past year,” Ferrer said, “I also want to note that it’s a bit unfair to make those comparisons because there’s less reportable testing.”
Since the COVID-19 emergency ended at the federal, state, and local levels in the Spring, reliable testing results — like PCR or other lab tests — have dropped significantly, meaning that DPH has less virus data to work with, Ferrer said.
Hospitalizations, though, are a more reliable metric the health department uses to get an understanding of how widespread COVID-19 is, Ferrer said. Those have also doubled since the first week of August — with an increase to 521 coronavirus-related hospitalizations over the last week from just 245 on Aug. 2.
“(But) hospitalizations remain well below the numbers we saw during the 2022 summer and winter surges,” Ferrer said. “In fact, there were only four other periods during the entire pandemic where hospitalizations were lower than what we’re reporting this week.”
Another metric — the average weekly rate of…
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