Pasadena reported 477 confirmed and 16 probable new cases of COVID-19 Thursday in a startling increase that was more than double Wednesday’s count and sets a new record number of daily cases in the city since the start of the pandemic began in early 2020.

Previously the most COVID cases detected in a single day was 253 incident cases, reported almost a year ago, on January 5.

The counts only include Pasadena residents.

Huntington Hospital reported it is seeing an increase in its COVID-positive patient count, but current hospitalizations remain significantly below what was seen during the Delta variant surge last December and January.

Currently, Huntington Hospital is reporting a total of 48 total COVID-positive patients, of whom 11 are in the ICU. 79% of the total COVID-positive patients are unvaccinated.

In a related development, Kaiser Permanente announced that while it will continue to have its “A Healthier Future” float participate in the Rose Parade it has decided to pull its 20 front-line medical heroes as float riders and “out-walkers.” 

As predicted, Los Angeles County topped 20,000 new COVID-19 cases amid what has become a dramatic surge in virus transmission that is continuing to drive up hospitalization numbers and raising fears that a higher death count will soon follow.

County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer reported 20,198 new COVID infections on Thursday, a number that she said represents a tripling of the number from just a week ago.

The new cases lifted the county’s overall total since the pandemic began to 1,669,545. Another 24 COVID-related deaths were also reported, giving the county an overall death toll of 27,625.

More dramatically, the average daily rate of people testing positive for the virus rose to 21% as of Thursday — seven times higher than it was a week ago. Last month, the rate was less than 1%.

“We are, in fact, experiencing the worst of the surge at the moment with the rising number of cases,” Ferrer said during an online briefing.

The number of COVID-positive patients in county hospitals also continued rising, with state figures showing the number at 1,365 as of Thursday, up from 1,251 on Wednesday. The number of those patients in intensive care was 214, up from 198 a day earlier.

Ferrer said that while circulation of the highly transmissible Omicron variant of COVID-19 has led to more fully vaccinated people getting infected, hospitalizations continue to be affecting primarily unvaccinated people. She said the hospitalization rate for unvaccinated people is 28 per 100,000 residents, while the rate for the vaccinated has remained relatively flat at 1 per 100,000.

“Vaccination continues to be highly protective against hospitalization,” she said.

She said statistics show unvaccinated people are 14 times more likely to die from the virus than the vaccinated. She also noted that overall, death rates of remained relatively flat in the county, despite the dramatic surge in infections, but she said that could change.

“Deaths fortunately remain low and they haven’t changed, but this is because we’re only about a week out from when our hospitalizations started rising,” she said.

Officials have said about 90% of the COVID deaths during the pandemic occurred in people who had underlying health conditions. The most common conditions are hypertension, diabetes and heart disease.

According to county figures, of the more than 6.3 million fully vaccinated people in the county, 127,172 have tested positive for the virus, for a rate of 2%, while 3,094 have been hospitalized, for a rate of 0.05%. A total of 602 fully vaccinated people have died, for a rate of 0.01%.

Overall, 79% of eligible county residents aged 5 and older have received at least one dose of vaccine, while 71% are fully vaccinated. Of the county’s overall population of 10.3 million people, 75% have received at least one dose, and 67% are fully vaccinated.

The lowest vaccination rate is among children aged 5-11 — the most recent age group to become eligible for the shots.

Ferrer urged more people to get vaccinated, and noted there are 2.9 million vaccinated residents in the county who are eligible for booster doses who have not yet received them.

“We urgently need to get more people protected by boosters,” she said.

Ferrer and county Supervisor Holly Mitchell urged residents to be cautious as they celebrate New Year’s Eve, with Ferrer noting, “The risk of virus transmission has never been higher in our county.” She urged people to avoid large gatherings, and gather outside whenever is possible. People who have underlying health conditions or aren’t vaccinated should avoid gatherings altogether, she said.

Ferrer said she respected plans for the Rose Parade to go on as scheduled on Saturday, despite the large crowds it traditionally gathers. But she said people at high risk for virus transmission or for severe illness if they become infected should avoid attending.

To look at the number of new COVID-19 cases this week, one might think this is December 2020. But a check of daily hospitalizations, ICU cases and new COVID-related deaths shows a significant difference.

Hospitalizations last December were described as hitting Huntington Hospital like a “tsunami,” at one point reaching 147 COVID-positive patients with 26 in the ICU.

By comparison, on Wednesday the Huntington Hospital reported 43 total COVID-positive patients with 8 in the ICU. The majority of the COVID-positive patients being treated at Huntington are unvaccinated.

That number of COVID admissions is significant enough to have required the hospital to erect tents outside its ER and to alert the public of extended wait times at what is Pasadena’s only Emergency Room, but is below the numbers seen during last year’s holiday surge.

The City announced 1 death Wednesday, in a current death toll that is far less than last year’s at this time.

However new infections have risen to levels not seen since last December and January. On Wednesday, the Pasadena Public Health Dept. reported a preliminary count of 200 confirmed and 7 probable new infections for the day.

The 7-day average rose to 128.4 cases, jumping by about 100 from a daily average of just over 20 early last week.

Los Angeles County reported a staggering 16,510 new COVID-19 cases in its latest data, one of the highest daily totals of the pandemic and up nearly 75% from Tuesday, while the hospitalization number soared again, prompting a call for residents to rethink their holiday gathering plans.

The county Department of Public Health urged residents “to scale down New Year’s plans by limiting gatherings to a very small number of people where everyone is fully vaccinated and boosted if eligible.” That agency added in a statement, “Large, crowded events are just too risky this holiday.”

The county reported an additional 25 COVID-related deaths on Wednesday, raising the overall death toll to 27,601. The 16,510 new cases gave the county a cumulative total from throughout the pandemic of 1,649,376.

The seven-day average daily rate of people testing positive for the virus also continued a disturbing climb, reaching 17.6%. That’s up from about 3% a week ago and less than 1% a month ago.

According to state figures, the number of COVID-positive patients in county hospitals rose to 1,251 as of Wednesday, up from 1,069 a day earlier. Of those patients, 198 were being treated in intensive care, down from 207 on Tuesday.

The increase in virus-related hospitalizations is being closely watched by public health officials concerned that hospitals — which expanded capacity to handle COVID patient numbers that topped 8,000 last January — are less equipped to cope with such an intense surge this winter due to various factors, most notably a drop in staffing.

L.A. County has seen a more than 30% jump in hospitalizations over the past week. One month ago, on Nov. 27, the state reported just 568 virus patients in the county.

The rapid spread of the virus is being blamed on the Omicron variant of the virus, which experts say is easily spread from person to person. Health officials said Omicron is believed to be responsible for 59% of all U.S. COVID infections, out-pacing the previous Delta variant, which now accounts for 41%.

During the week that ended Dec. 18, 54% of all COVID specimens that underwent genetic testing in the county were Omicron variants, according to the Department of Public Health.

Even people fully vaccinated are susceptible to Omicron infection, although health officials say they are far less likely to become severely ill, wind up hospitalized or die. Ferrer said last week unvaccinated people are 21 times more likely to be hospitalized than vaccinated people.

Officials have said about 90% of the COVID deaths during the pandemic occurred in people who had underlying health conditions. The most common conditions are hypertension, diabetes and heart disease.

The health department announced Friday that it was expanding access to free COVID testing amid greater demand around the holidays.

The changes include:

— Extended hours of operation at sites across Los Angeles County;
— Additional week and weekend dates;
— Additional mobile testing units in hard-hit areas;
— Re-launch of Holiday Home Test Collection Program with new guidelines to reach more people and make it easier to get tested. The link is at https://covid19.lacounty.gov/hometest.

Any county resident who is symptomatic or believes they were exposed to COVID-19 can order a home testing kit, which require swab collection to be mailed back for PCR test result.

Pasadena officials said Tuesday the city saw its largest single-day count of new COVID-19 infections late last week as the recent surge of new cases reached a level not seen since last January’s surge of the Delta variant.

However, the jump in new cases has been absent a precipitous increase in hospitalized patients and deaths.

City spokesperson Lisa Derderian said Pasadedna’s Public Health department recorded 203 and 12 probable new COVID-19 cases last Friday. That is the highest single day since 238 cases were recorded on January 8, 2021. At the peak of the Delta surge, the highest day’s new case count was 253 infections.

Derderian said the case counts in recent days were 107 new cases on Saturday; 61 confirmed and 4 probable new cases on Sunday; 105 confirmed and 3 probable new cases on Monday; and as of 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, 66 confirmed and 15 probable new cases on Tuesday.

The city’s 7-day average number of new CIOVID-19 cases was 119.6 cases on Tuesday, up from just above 20 at the start of last week.

The most recently available Huntington Hospital COVID-19 caseload information from Monday showed a total of 39 admitted COVID-19-positive patients as of that afternoon. 13 were under ICU care. 79% of the total number of patients were unvaccinated.

Just hours before Tuesday’s scheduled kickoff, the Holiday Bowl between UCLA and North Carolina State at San Diego’s Petco Park became the latest casualty of the resurgent pandemic due to coronavirus issues within the Bruins football program.

Also on Tuesday, Los Angeles County officials posted 22 new COVID-19 deaths and 9,473 new cases, and the number of coronavirus-positive patients in hospitals soared over the 1,000 mark. Countywide positive test results also topped 14%, deepening concern among public health officials.

The state’s dashboard listed 1,069 people in L.A. County hospitals with COVID-19, a jump of 377 in one day, with 207 of those patients in intensive care.

The increase is being closely watched by public health officials concerned that hospitals are less equipped to cope with such an intense surge this winter due to various factors, most notably a drop in staffing.

The L.A. County increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations has been rapid, jumping by 30% over the past week. On Nov. 27, the state reported 568 virus patients in the county.

Also rapidly rising is the rate of people testing positive for the virus. According to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, the seven-day average daily rate of people testing positive rose to 14.5% as of Tuesday. One week ago, the rate was 3%. On Nov. 22, it was 0.9%.

The rapid spread is being blamed on the omicron variant, which experts say is easily spread from person to person. Even people fully vaccinated are susceptible to omicron infection, although health officials say they’re far less likely to become severely ill, wind up hospitalized or die. County Department of Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said last week that unvaccinated people are 21 times more likely to be hospitalized than vaccinated people. Tuesday’s totals pushed the cumulative pandemic total number of infections to 1,632,893 and the county’s death toll to 27,576.

Ferrer also warned last week that if infections continue such a dramatic rise, the daily case number could top 20,000 by the new year, its highest level of the pandemic.

Officials have said about 90% of the COVID-19 deaths during the pandemic occurred in people who had underlying health conditions. The most common conditions are hypertension, diabetes and heart disease.

Ferrer said last week the county was not immediately contemplating any renewed health restrictions in response to the latest virus surge, although she said everything remains on the table depending on the trajectory of the infections and the more critical impact on the hospital system.

In response to the ongoing community transmission of COVID-19 and the presence of new and emerging variants, the LA County Health Officer Order requires businesses to take steps to ensure the safety of their customers and employees, including universal masking indoors and, for some businesses, verification of vaccination status or a negative test prior to entry.  In combination, requiring masks indoors and encouraging residents to get vaccinated are effective ways to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19 in the community.  Nevertheless, businesses may encounter customers who do not comply with masking and vaccination rules.  The COVID-19 Guidance for Businesses: Managing Non-Compliant Patrons and Visitors provides guidance for managing these situations.  

Other pertinent information and resources can be found on the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health website at http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/media/Coronavirus/

CDC Guidelines: U.S. health officials’ decision to shorten the recommended COVID-19 isolation and quarantine period from 10 days to five is drawing criticism from some medical experts and could create more confusion and fear among Americans.

To the dismay of some authorities, the new guidelines allow people to leave isolation without getting tested to see if they are still infectious.

The guidance has raised questions about how it was crafted and why it was changed now, in the middle of another wintertime spike in cases, this one driven largely by the highly contagious omicron variant.

Monday’s action by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cut in half the recommended isolation time for Americans who are infected with the coronavirus but have no symptoms. The CDC similarly shortened the amount of time people who have come into close contact with an infected person need to quarantine.

The CDC has been under pressure from the public and the private sector, including the airline industry, to shorten the isolation time and reduce the risk of severe staffing shortages amid the omicron surge. Thousands of flights have been canceled over the past few days in a mess blamed on omicron.

CDC officials said the guidance is in keeping with growing evidence that people with the virus are most infectious in the first few days. Louis Mansky, director of the Institute for Molecular Virology at the University of Minnesota, agreed there is a scientific basis to the CDC’s recommendations.
Research, including a study published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine in August, backs that up, though medical experts cautioned that nearly all of the data predates omicron.

 

Changes and confusion

As we approach the third year of the pandemic, the coronavirus continues to make life difficult — and confusing. Official guidance on masks, testing and isolation change as new variants emerge, and a stream of case numbers turns us into armchair epidemiologists, trying to figure out how risky it is to attend a New Year’s Eve party.

If the past few weeks have left you dizzy, you’re not alone. In today’s newsletter we’ll explain some recent developments and take stock as we head into 2022.

New isolation rules

The C.D.C. this week shortened its recommended isolation period, saying that people who are infected can re-enter society after five days if they don’t have symptoms or if their symptoms are resolving. The guidance adds that people should wear a mask for five days after that.

The change came about, officials said, because studies have found that a majority of transmission happens in the first five days of an infection. It also allows companies to bring back workers in half the time.

Delta Air Lines, which had urged the C.D.C. to adopt the change, welcomed the news, as did officials in the food and retail industries. In New York City, a vital subway line shut down yesterday because so many workers were out sick. Shops and restaurants have temporarily closed across Europe.

Dr. Ashish Jha called the new guidance “reasonable,” as long as people follow the rule that they leave isolation only if they are asymptomatic. But Jha added that he would have required a negative rapid test before leaving isolation.

Many public health experts had a harsher reaction to the new rules, particularly the decision to omit testing. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan, called it “reckless and, frankly, stupid.”

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the C.D.C. director, told CNN that the guidance “had a lot to do with what we thought people would be able to tolerate.” She estimated that less than a third of people who should have isolated in the past had done so; the new rules, she said, were meant to encourage people to stay in when they were “maximally infectious.”

Experts also noted that the guidelines make no distinction between vaccinated and unvaccinated people who test positive, despite the unvaccinated facing far greater risks.

“The C.D.C. should develop further guidelines, right now, that allow for those who are vaccinated and boostered to leave isolation as soon as possible after they have gotten negative results repeatedly with antigen tests,” Dr. Aaron E. Carroll, the chief health officer for Indiana University, wrote in The Times. And, he added, the Biden administration should do “everything possible to make such antigen tests freely and easily available.”

Severe cases

It’s too early to be sure of Omicron’s effect on hospitalizations and deaths. But health officials say the early data offers some cautiously positive signs.

Walensky said yesterday that cases had increased by around 60 percent over the past week and hospitalizations had risen by 14 percent. While hospitalizations tend to lag cases, she noted, the pattern is similar to countries that have had the variant for longer, like South Africa and Britain.

Take the two states below as an example. New York has been one of the hardest-hit states in the current wave, and Florida was hit hard this summer by Delta. In each, hospitalizations haven’t yet reached the levels of last winter’s peaks, despite cases rising past that mark. (Look up your state here.)

Source: New York Times database

“The pattern and disparity between cases and hospitalizations strongly suggest that there will be a lower hospitalization-to-case ratio when the situation becomes more clear,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said yesterday.

It’s not clear that Omicron’s severity is the main cause of the split between cases and hospitalizations, though, as a year’s worth of vaccinations and infections have strengthened the country’s resistance to the virus.

Omicron and Delta

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been talking a lot about Omicron, which is the dominant variant in the U.S. and many other countries. But Delta, the variant that came to prominence in the summer, is still here.

South African scientists are hoping that there’s some good news: People who have recovered from an infection with Omicron may be able to fend off Delta, according to a small early study. (The reverse is most likely not true: Delta antibodies seem to offer little protection against Omicron.)

If the theory holds, Omicron may eventually overwhelm Delta, Carl Zimmer explained in The Times. And if Omicron is indeed less severe, its takeover could mean that fewer people get seriously ill or die.

But that doesn’t mean that Omicron will be the only variant for years to come, Carl wrote: “Once people gain immunity to Omicron, natural selection may favor mutations that produce a new variant that can evade that immunity.”

Something else to know about Omicron versus earlier variants: The incubation period seems to be shorter. It may take three days for people to develop symptoms, become contagious and test positive, compared with four to six days with Delta.