Los Angeles Covid Hospitalizations Top 1,000 For The First Time In Months

30.11.2022 - 01:47 / deadline.com

Winter in Los Angeles means cold nights, Santa Anas, a traffic crush around malls and, for the past few years, a surge in Covid cases.

Over the past two weeks, the 7-day average test positivity in L.A. County has grown more than 100%, from 6.5% the Wednesday before last to 14.7% today, public health officials reported. Daily case numbers have fluctuated, with 3,077 new infections reported last Wednesday and 2,370 today. Either way, county officials say, those numbers are an undercount given the underreporting of at-home test results.

But the number that officials really watch is hospitalizations. When hospitals overflow, deaths increase markedly. Even as case numbers and test positivity have risen sharply throughout November, hospitalizations have lagged. No more.

The number of county residents hospitalized with Covid hit 822 last Wednesday, according to the latest state figures. That’s up from 666 one week before, marking a 23% increase in seven days. Today, the number of Covid-related hospitalizations topped 1,000 for the first time since the end of the summer wave in mid-August. Today’s numbers showed 1,040 such patients, marking a 56% increase in the past two weeks.

Official data indicates 122 of those patients are being treated in intensive care, an increase from 96 ICU patients on Thursday.

The hospitalization numbers are still low compared to previous surges. This past summer, Covid hospitalizations hit a high of 1,329 on July 20. On January 17 of this year, total patients hospitalized with Covid hit a whopping 4,564. The all-pandemic high came on January 7, 2021 with 7,966.

One thing to observe is that both of those peaks came in mid-ish January, two to three weeks after the winter holidays. We’re still