1,000 LA County Residents Who Recently Traveled To Mainland China Being Tracked By Health Officials
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — More than 1,000 people who have recently traveled to mainland China are being tracked in the effort to contain the coronavirus outbreak, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Dr. Barbara Ferrer said Tuesday.
Those being tracked are Los Angeles County residents who have traveled to mainland China over the past 14 days, and came back through LAX, Ferrer told the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
"All of those folks, we're calling them. We're assigning them a public health nurse, and that's over a thousand people," she said. "And we will follow up with them again, for 14 days from their last exposure. We're making sure that they know to do social distancing, not to go to work, not to go to school, they have thermometers, they are taking their temperatures every day and they are checking in with us if they start to feel sick."
Ferrer said the department has asked companies and employers to cooperate with the effort to contain the coronavirus.
"We're asking all employers to please make sure they're offering flexible leave policies," Ferrer said. "We don't want people not able to follow the directives because they can't afford to, so we're really asking our employers to help with that."
As of Wednesday, there is only one confirmed case of coronavirus in Los Angeles County. California has a total of seven cases, out of the 13 in the United States.
Worldwide, there are 43,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with more than 1,000 deaths, most in mainland China.
"The numbers are staggering and we still have lots of new cases, but the last seven days have seen a decline in the number of new cases each day, which means that we are hopeful that some of the steps that they have taken, you know, in mainland China to contain the virus are starting to bear fruit," Ferrer said.
