COVID-19 Hospitalizations in Los Angeles County Spike As More People Test Positive
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – New COVID-19 hospitalizations in Los Angeles County in the US state of California have spiked as test positivity has increased 10-fold over the last five weeks, according to data released by local public health authorities on Monday.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health reported 1,233 new cases of COVID-19 and two new deaths in a release.
There are 528 people with COVID-19 currently hospitalized in Los Angeles County. On June 15, there were 218 people hospitalized, said the department, adding that test positivity increased 10-fold from the 0.4 percent on June 15 to Monday's test positivity rate of 4.1 percent.
Officials said the county is now beginning to see corresponding increases in hospitalizations after cases increased 700 percent since June 15, Xinhua news agency reported.
Los Angeles returned to mandatory mask-wearing indoors over the weekend. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health noted that they require all residents to wear masks in indoor public spaces, regardless of vaccination status.
"LA County continues to see alarming trends of increased community spread. The spread of the more infectious Delta variant through intermingling of unmasked individuals where vaccination status is unknown has caused a rapid spread of COVID-19 that is resulting in a significant increase in cases and hospitalizations," said Barbara Ferrer, the county's director of Public Health, in the release.
"By wearing masks indoors at public places and worksites, we can get back to slowing the spread of the virus," she added.
To date, the department has identified 1,269,090 positive cases with 24,585 deaths in the county, home to over 10 million residents.
Official data showed that among residents aged 16 and above in Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the United States, around 70 percent have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and 62 percent have been fully vaccinated. But officials noted there are still almost 4 million people in the county who have not been or are not eligible to be vaccinated, including 1.3 million children under 12 years of age.