LA County Surpasses 11K COVID-19 Deaths, Hospitals Overwhelmed
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Tuesday reported 13,512 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 224 additional deaths, bringing the countywide totals to 840,611 cases and 11,071 deaths.
"L.A. County reached the terrible milestone of more than 11,000 deaths due to COVID-19," Dr. Barbara Ferrer, county public health director, said. "As a community, we must commit to stopping the spread of COVID-19 in its tracks so that we can save as many lives as possible."
The county has reported more than 1,000 deaths in less than a week when on Dec. 30, officials reported 10,056 total deaths from the virus.
Health officials also reported there were 7,898 COVID-19 patients hospitalized Tuesday, 21% of whom were being treated in intensive care units — an increase of more than 200 patients since Monday and a new record high for the county.
"The devastating impact of the pandemic is disrupting emergency medical care due to the sheer volume of COVID-19 patients and staffing limitations," the department said in a release. "These challenges will get worse if we don't slow COVID-19 spread."
And hospitals across the county are feeling the pressure from the latest surge.
"Everyday we hit a record for our number of COVID patients, today we hit 160," Dr. Nancy Blake, chief nursing officer at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, said. "We're running 150% occupancy in our ICU. We keep adding and adding, and we want the end to be near."
But with no end in sight, the U.S. Department of Defense is sending in two 20-person medical teams to help this week — one will go to Harbor-UCLA and the other to Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center.
Health officials also said that as of Dec. 28, five of the 4,136 pregnant women who tested positive for COVID-19 had died, and among the 2,053 births where there was testing information, 30 babies tested positive for the virus.
Seventy-nine percent of pregnant women testing positive for COVID-19 are Latinx, 9% are White, 4% are African American/Black, 3% are Asian, less than 1% are Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 2% identify with another race and race/ethnicity was unknown or unspecified for the remaining 2%.
Health officials said Tuesday that they were continuing to test for new variants of COVID-19 — one out of the United Kingdom and the other out of South Africa — though neither have yet to be found in L.A. County.
With testing results available for nearly 4,826,000 people, the county's overall positivity rate was 16%.
