As Several COVID Metrics Decline, LA County Residents Are Reminded to Take Steps to Reduce Risk and Spread

Several LA County COVID-19 metrics are showing decline, including daily cases, daily case rate, positivity rate, and hospitalizations. Although these declines are a positive sign, residents should not take them as an indication to forgo common sense protective measures that will allow these declines to continue. Utilizing public health safety measures will drive down cases, which will ultimately end staffing shortages, reduce workplace and school outbreaks, and most importantly, keep residents from getting seriously ill and dying. 

Two weeks ago on January 11th, LA County reported 34,827 new cases, two days after seeing the highest number of new cases since the pandemic began. Public Health is reporting 18,822 new cases today. While this is still a high number of cases, it represents a 46% drop in new cases in two weeks. Over the same time period, the daily rate of cases per 100,000 residents also decreased by 20% and the daily positivity rate decreased by 30%. 

Additionally, the number of residents getting seriously ill and needing hospitalization has also begun to decline. As hospitalizations lag cases, the number of people hospitalized peaked on January 20th at 4,814 and have slowly declined since, with 4,554 people currently hospitalized. While this decline is small and just beginning, we are hopeful with a reduced number of cases, the number of people hospitalized will continue to go down. 

It is also important to recognize that while these declines are cause for hopefulness, the number of people dying from COVID-19 is unfortunately increasing, as deaths typically lag increases in cases and hospitalizations. Over the past two weeks, deaths have increased by 140% from 15 deaths reported on January 11th to 36 deaths reported today. Sadly, the number of people dying is expected to continue to increase for the next several weeks.