California’s largest county is on course to be labeled a “High” Covid level community in the next seven days. Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said today of that outcome, “I think it’s likely next week.” L.A. would join 35 other of the state’s counties that are already there.
Ferrer based her projection on LACPH modeling of the region’s Covid-related hospitalization rate, which currently sits at 8.4 per 100,000 residents. Once it gets above 10 per 100,000 — as it’s expected to on July 14 — a 14-day timer starts on reimplementing the county’s mandatory indoor masking rule. If the region stays above 10 per 100,000 for 14 days, the mask mandate would go into effect on July 29.
The department’s hospitalization modeling has been fairly accurate over the past few weeks. But it could prove less so in the coming days.
Ferrer repeatedly emphasized that there were reporting delays over the long July 4 weekend, a frequent holiday hangover effect that sees Covid numbers spike across the board as data gathering catches up. There’s also the prospect of spread from gatherings over the holiday, which could reinforce the trend over the next three weeks.
“We’re worried that they will immediately go back up,” Ferrer said of Covid numbers after the holiday, “possibly including more cases from the long weekend.
Another accelerant is the rapid spread of the more transmissible BA.5 subvariant which, according to CDC data, accounted for over 60% of new cases last week in the three state region comprised of California, Nevada and Arizona. BA.5 is able to overcome immunity conferred by vaccination and, especially, the immunity that comes as a result of pervious infection. BA.5 and its sister Omicron subvariant BA.4 are also thought to cause somewhat more severe illness than their Omicron forbears because they lodge further down into the lungs, instead of up in the nasal passages.
More to come…
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