Cases: From the Pasadena Star-News: LA County falls out of ‘High’ COVID activity level; transmission still high, officials caution. As of Thursday, the county's average rate of new COVID cases was 180 per 100,000 residents, down from 204 per 100,000 a week ago. That dropped the county below the threshold of 200 per 100,000 residents for the "high" community activity level set by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Thanks to falling infection numbers, Los Angeles County on Thursday, Dec. 22, moved out of the federal government’s “high” COVID-19 activity category and into the “medium” level, but the county’s health director warned that transmission remains elevated and urged people to exercise caution over the holidays.
As of Thursday, the county’s average rate of new COVID cases was 180 per 100,000 residents, down from 204 per 100,000 a week ago.
That dropped the county below the threshold of 200 per 100,000 residents for the “high” community activity level set by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said the county over the past week averaged about 2,600 new COVID infections per day, a roughly 12% decline from 3,000 per day the previous week. Despite the decline, she stressed that “transmission does remain elevated” in the county, noting again that the official case numbers are an undercount due to the widespread use of at-home tests — the results of which are not reported to the county — and due to people who don’t get tested at all.
Moving from the “high” to the “medium” category will not have any impact on public health restrictions, although it decreases the likelihood of the county re-imposing an indoor mask-wearing mandate, which Ferrer previously said could be done if case rates and hospitalization numbers continued to increase.
She urged residents to “layer in protections over the next few weeks,” such as wearing masks in crowded indoor settings, staying home when sick and getting tested before attending large gatherings.
Mask wearing continues to be “strongly recommended” by the county at indoor public settings. But Ferrer said that even absent a mandate, residents should start wearing them, given the elevated rate of transmission.
Masks are still required indoors at health-care and congregate-care facilities, for anyone exposed to the virus in the past 10 days, and at businesses where they are required by the owner.
Ferrer said the county is averaging 178 new COVID-related hospital admissions per day, about a 10% drop from a week ago, but she said the number is still at its highest level since April, even higher than during the summer surge in infections.
The number of available staffed hospital beds in the county, meanwhile, continues to remain at its lowest level in four years, averaging 210 during the month of December. She said bed availability is impacted by both the number of patients and the level of hospital staffing.
The average number of daily virus-related deaths reported by the county also remains elevated, rising to 21 per day over the past week, up from 16 per day a week ago and more than double the rate from the beginning of the month.
She noted the vast majority of deaths are occurring in people aged 70 and older, reflecting the population that is also being hospitalized due to the virus at the highest levels.
According to state figures, there were 1,256 COVID-positive patients in county hospitals as of Thursday, down from 1,274 on Wednesday. Of those patients, 150 were being treated in intensive care units, down slightly from 152 the previous day.
Health officials have estimated that roughly 40% of patients with the virus were admitted for actual COVID-related ailments, while others were hospitalized for other reasons, with many only learning they were infected upon admission.
Another 23 deaths were reported Wednesday, raising the county’s overall virus-related death toll to 34,515.
The seven-day average daily rate of people testing positive for the virus was 11.4% as of Wednesday, up from 10.4% a week ago.
Long Beach’s coronavirus transmission elevated to the medium tier two weeks ago, when its weekly average COVID-19 case rate topped 200 per 100,000 residents.
The city, which operates its own independent health department, remained in the elevated tier last week, and reported an additional 1,053 new cases as of Friday, Dec. 16.
Prior to Long Beach’s move to medium transmission, the city’s COVID-19 metrics had been steadily increasing for weeks — with health officials cautioning residents against rising rates of the virus alongside higher than usual instances of influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.
Pasadena Public Health, which operates independently from Los Angeles County’s Department and the city of Long Beach, reported 43 new coronavirus cases in Pasadena as of Thursday, Dec. 22, slightly less than it reported last Thursday.
No new deaths were reported, however, the department estimates 2,555 probable cases of COVID-19 in the city.
Pasadena Health Officer Dr. Eric Handler said the region is witnessing increases in COVID-19 cases and local hospitalizations, “and unseasonably elevated levels of influenza infections that put our local residents at increased risk for severe illness and death.”
City health officials, as a result, revised the city’s health order to “strongly recommending” residents mask up this holiday weekend to ensure hospitals are not overstressed.
The Economy: From the Pasadena Star-News: The combined GDP for Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties was $1.12 trillion for 2021, the fourth consecutive year with 13 digits in the total. Other than California in its entirety, the only states with greater output were Texas’ $1.82 trillion and New York’s $1.51 trillion. Florida was No. 4 nationally with its GDP hitting $1 trillion for the first time.
And looking at the World Bank’s global scorecard, Southern California’s output was slightly larger than all the business done in the Netherlands, the 17th biggest economy on the planet.
Southern California’s output was up $40 billion vs. the 2018-19 average – an increase that exceeds Wyoming’s entire $36 billion GDP for one year. Only four states – California, Texas, Florida and Washington – had bigger GDP growth since 2018-19.
But here’s a sour note: When the region’s economic heft was measured against the growth, the pace looked slow.
The four-county region’s 3.7% GDP growth vs. 2018-19 trailed the nation’s 4.1% overall expansion rate. And Southern California badly trailed the 9.2% growth found in the Golden State’s other 54 counties combined.
Also from the Star-News: A measure of inflation closely watched by the Federal Reserve slowed last month, another sign that a long surge in consumer prices seems to be easing.
Friday’s report from the Commerce Department showed that prices rose 5.5% in November from a year earlier, down from a revised 6.1% increase in October and the smallest gain since October 2021. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core inflation was up 4.7% over the previous year. That was also the smallest increase since October 2021.
On a month-to-month basis, prices rose 0.1% from October to November after rising 0.4% the previous month. Core prices rose 0.2%.
Inflation, which began surging a year and a half ago as the economy bounced back from 2020’s coronavirus recession, still remains well above the 2% year-over-year growth the Fed wants to see.
The central bank has raised its benchmark interest rate seven times since March in an attempt to bring consumer prices under control.
Higher prices and borrowing costs may be taking a toll on American consumers. Their spending rose just 0.1% from October to November and didn’t rise at all after adjusting for higher prices.
Americans’ after-tax income, however, rose 0.3% in November even after accounting for inflation.
There was far less poverty in 2020 and 2021. The improvement was by no means just in California. The rest of the nation saw a 7.6 million drop in those living in poverty. The No. 2 dip was found in Texas at 868,000, followed by Florida at 702,000, Illinois at 456,000 and New York at 424,000.
Yes, tons of pandemic-related federal and state aid to all Americans – much of it targeting lower-income households – was key.
The big drops came in big states with big poverty challenges. So, we’ll also tip our caps to where poverty fell at the fastest rate.
California’s 23% percentage drop only ranked 32nd among the states. Best was Maine, off 43%, then Oregon, down 36%, New Jersey and South Dakota, down 33%, and New Hampshire, down 32%.
Declining poverty wasn’t just a pandemic occurrence. Improvements were also found in 2019, comparing that year’s data to 2009 – in the middle of the Great Recession and the first year for this new poverty count.