Californians will have to keep wearing face masks indoors past Valentine’s Day regardless of vaccination, the state’s top health official said Wednesday as COVID-19 cases reached a new record fueled by the fast-spreading omicron variant.
Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said the face mask mandate will be extended a month to Feb. 15 and reevaluated then.
California’s seven-day average of new daily coronavirus cases has nearly doubled since Friday to 54,695, a new record high. Citing the surge, organizers of the Grammy Awards, scheduled to take place at the Crypto. com Arena in Los Angeles later this month, postponed the event Wednesday for a second year in a row, but Ghaly said the Super Bowl is still scheduled to be played at Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium on Feb. 13.
Health officials are working with the National Football League, he said, “to make sure people can enjoy this important event” while ensuring measures are in place to avoid spreading the virus. Still, the NFL acknowledged that it had been in contact with other cities in case it needs to move the game.
Coronavirus infections are spreading like wildfire across the country as well, topping an average of nearly 550,000 new cases a day, with omicron now accounting for about 95% of cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Pasadena is set to require employers to provide upgraded masks for employees. From the Pasadena Public Information Officer: As new COVID-19 cases mount by hundreds daily, Pasadena employers will soon be required to provide upgraded face masks—such as N95 or KN95—to their on-site employees, contracted workers and volunteers to wear at all times while indoors at their worksite. The City of Pasadena anticipates issuing this Order in the coming days which will take effect on January 17.. We encourage employers to procure and upgrade masks for their employees prior to January 17.
Cases: Los Angeles County set another daily record with 45,584 positive COVID-19 tests Sunday, continuing a winter surge in transmission driven by the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
On Friday, health officials reported a then-record 43,712 new infections, and on Saturday they said the county had seen more than 200,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases over the past 7 days, the highest number in one week since the beginning of the pandemic.
Pasadena’s Public Health dept. has not reported new COVD-19 cases since Thursday. An update is expected on Monda evening.
AS OF FRIDAY MORNING: Pasadena city and Huntington Hospital officials reported Thursday the number of new coronavirus cases and hospitalized patients in Pasadena continues to mount daily.
The confirmed new COVID-positive cases are rising at an unprecedented rate. There were 412 confirmed and 23 probable cases recorded Wednesday. The 7-day average is now 347.4 cases per day, more than 10 times higher than two weeks ago.
Huntington Hospital said the number of COVID-positive patients in its care has risen to 89, with 12 in the ICU. 75% of all these patients were unvaccinated.
The hospital also said it has “paused” booking for new elective surgeries for the time being “to ensure adequate space and staffing for the anticipated increase in COVID-19 patients as well as surgical beds for the procedures that cannot be postponed.”
It also reported that people are coming to the hospital’s Emergency Dept. seeking to be tested for COVID-19 and sought to discourage that by reminding the community that the ED is for emergency and trauma care.
A hospital official recommended people wanting a COVID test refer to:
The hospital set up “surge tents” outside the hospital and closed its Emergency Dept. to visitors except for juvenile patients or those who require a support person under ADA Guidelines.
Meanwhile, state figures showed there were 2,661 COVID-positive patients in county hospitals as of Thursday, up from 2,461 on Wednesday. The number of those patients being treated in intensive care units was 352 on Thursday, up from 330 a day earlier.
The number of COVID-positive patients hasn’t been that high since mid- February of 2021. But the number is still well shy of the peak of more than 8,000 reached last January, at the height of that winter’s surge in virus infections.
While hospital numbers have been rising, officials have noted the generally lower rise in the overall number of COVID and non-COVID patients.
In fact, many COVID-positive patients in hospitals likely didn’t realize they were infected until they went the hospital for a completely different reason. Ferrer said that in early November — before the highly transmissible Omicron COVID variant began spreading — about 75% of COVID- positive patients were hospitalized specifically due to illness associated with the infection. But as of late December, only 45% of COVID patients were admitted specifically due to the virus. The others only tested positive when they were admitted for treatment of other issues.
Statistics on COVID-positive hospital patients released Thursday also continued to show that unvaccinated people are far more likely to wind up hospitalized than vaccinated people. Ferrer noted that hospital numbers are rising in all categories — unvaccinated, vaccinated, and vaccinated-and- boosted. But unvaccinated people are 38 times more likely to wind up hospitalized that people have been fully vaccinated and received a booster shot.
Surging infection numbers prompted the county this week to amend its public health order, requiring employers to provide upgraded masks to employees who work indoors in close contact with others.
The order, issued Wednesday, will take effect Jan. 17 and requires employers to provide affected workers with “well-fitting medical grade masks, surgical masks, or higher-level respirators, such as N95 or KN95 masks.”
The revised order also amended the definition of outdoor “mega events,” where masking is required, to 5,000 or more attendees; and the definition of indoor “mega” events to 500 or more people. The numbers align with those in the state’s health order. The county’s order also “recommends” that food and drink be consumed only in designated dining areas.
The upgraded mask requirement for county workplaces mirrors an order released late last week by the county for K-12 schools, requiring teachers and staff to wear higher-grade face coverings. USC announced this week it will require all students and staff to wear higher-grade masks when in-person classes resume.
The average daily rate of people testing positive for the virus was 21.9% as of Thursday. That rate was below 1% a month ago.
Demand for COVID tests has been growing rapidly, with long lines becoming a common site at testing centers across the county. The demand has also led to a run on take-home tests, which quickly vanish from store shelves.
Los Angeles County this week was forced to suspend its program offering free at-home tests. That program allowed residents to simply sign up through the county’s website, allowing them to get a test mailed to their home through Fulgent Genetics. The county’s website now says the program is suspended, with Fulgent saying it is on hold “due to high demand and shipping constraints.”
According to Fulgent, no new orders will be accepted until at least Wednesday. Incoming samples from tests that were previously distributed are still being processed.
Ferrer said efforts are being made to expand the number of COVID testing sites.
According to county figures released Thursday, of the more than 6.4 million fully vaccinated people in the county, 199,314 have tested positive for the virus, for a rate of 3.1%, while 3,348 have been hospitalized, for a rate of 0.05%. A total of 625 fully vaccinated people have died, for a rate of 0.01%.
The testing-positivity rate, however, may be artificially low due to the number of people who use take-home tests and don’t report the results.
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.
Pasadena’s Public Health Department reported 1,026 confirmed new cases and 73 new probable cases of COVID-19 over the Friday through Sunday New Year’s holiday weekend, exceeding any previous 3-day period in the pandemic.
In the same period, an unvaccinated 80-year-old Latino man died from COVID-related causes, the PPHD reported.
Hospitalizations rose but not nearly at the same rate. The Huntington Hospital reported 70 COVID-positive patients, 73% of whom were unvaccinated, on Monday. 10 of those patients were in the Hospital’s intensive care unit.
The surge of COVID-19 infections continued to drive up hospitalizations throughout Los Angeles as a whole Monday, with state figures showing the number of virus-positive patients in Los Angeles County medical centers nearing 2,000, the highest level since last winter.
According to the state, there were 1,994 COVID-positive patients in county hospitals as of Monday, a jump of more than 200 from the previous day and the highest number since last February. There were 278 of those patients in intensive care, up from 263 on Sunday.
The county Department of Public Health reported that the number of pediatric COVID patients — while still relatively small — increased by nearly 190% from Dec. 4-25, with children under 4 seeing the biggest pediatric increase.
Although current figures were not immediately available, county officials told City News Service last week that on Dec. 2, there were eight pediatric patients hospitalized with COVID in the county, but that number jumped to 21 on Dec. 23.
The county issued revised guidelines late last week for schools, requiring teachers and staff to wear upgraded surgical-grade masks, while also requiring mask-wearing outdoors for students when physical distancing isn’t possible. Dozens of school districts resumed in-person classes Monday, while the Los Angeles Unified School District will return next week.
The county will also be helping to distribute at-home test kits being made available by the state to all students in California.
With the highly transmissible Omicron variant of COVID-19 fueling spread of the virus, the county’s case numbers have been skyrocketing over the past week. The county reported nearly 45,000 new cases over the weekend, following a daily record high of 27,091 new infections on Friday.
On Monday — when case and fatality numbers are traditionally low due to reporting delays from the weekend — the county announced eight more COVID- related deaths and 16,269 new cases.
The numbers increased the county’s COVID death toll to 24,647, and the cumulative pandemic case number to 1,757,522.
The rolling seven-day average daily rate of people testing positive for the virus was 22.5% as of Monday. That rate was below 1% in November.
With hospitalizations rising, county health officials urged residents to avoid visiting hospital emergency rooms unless they urgently need emergency care.
“Health officials continued to urge residents to curtail higher-risk activities, including indoor activities where individuals are unmasked for long periods of time, as well as crowded outdoor events.
Evidence suggests that only those who have recently completed their vaccination series or are boosted have significant protection from becoming infected with the highly contagious Omicron variant, according to Public Health officials.
She also noted that overall, COVID death rates have remained relatively flat in the county, despite the dramatic surge in infections, but she said that could change.
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 Southern California News Group reported Monday that COVID cases have begun impacting high school athletic activities, with basketball teams from schools including Chaminade, Long Beach Poly, Bishop Montgomery and Rolling Hills Prop pulling out of games due to virus issues. Sierra Canyon and Notre Dame announced that they will limit access to basketball games, the newspaper group reported.
More: California leaders unveiled plans to keep pandemic-impacted homeowners from losing their homes, offering up to $80,000 in grants to owners behind on their mortgage payments.
The one-time grants are part of a new $1 billion federally-funded program to aid homeowners facing the threat of foreclosure because they lost income during the pandemic.
This is on top of forbearance programs that allowed homeowners to defer mortgage payments for up to 15 months. It’s also on top of $1.7 billion already doled out to more than 145,000 California renters since last spring.
State housing officials said during a Wednesday Zoom conference they expect an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 homeowners to receive an average of $40,000 in one-time grants to bring their mortgage payments current. The money is a gift that won’t have to be repaid, they said. By comparison, rental assistance grants to California tenants have averaged just less than $12,000 a piece.
The Economy: Stocks slumped and bond yields rose Wednesday as Wall Street interpreted the minutes from the Federal Reserve’s recent meeting of policymakers as a sign the central bank is poised to move faster to raise interest rates this year as it battles inflation. The U.S. job market is nearly healthy enough that the central bank’s low-interest rate policies are no longer needed, Federal Reserve officials concluded last month.
Fed officials also expressed concerns in minutes from its December meeting, released Wednesday, that surging inflation was spreading into more areas of the economy and would last longer than they previously expected.
“Many (policymakers) saw the U.S. economy making rapid progress” toward the Fed’s goal of “maximum employment,” the minutes said. “Several” officials said they felt the goal had already been reached.
California Stimulus: The last round of $600 payments issued by California will conclude the state’s pandemic stimulus program by Tuesday, the Franchise Tax Board said Wednesday. The 180,000 payments in this final round, valued at roughly $127 million, started in late December and will trickle through January, the agency said in an email Wednesday. A previous round of 794,000 GSS II payments worth some $568 million went out Dec. 13-31.
Since late August, the Golden State Stimulus II program has issued some 8.2 million checks and direct deposits valued at just over $5.9 billion. The program is part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s pandemic recovery plan. The $600 payments were intended for California’s middle-income residents who earn less than $75,000 in adjusted gross income. Qualifying families got an additional $500 for dependents.
Early in the program, most of the stimulus payments were distributed by direct deposit for residents who filed their 2020 taxes electronically and provided a bank account for the tax return’s deposit.
The state also launched another pandemic program called Golden State Stimulus I that went to lower-income residents who earned less than $35,000 in AGI.
The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose last week but remained at historically low levels, suggesting that the job market remains strong. U.S. jobless claims rose by 7,000 last week to 207,000. The four-week average of claims, which smooths out week-toweek gyrations, rose by nearly 4,800 to just below 205,000. Despite the increases, the numbers show that weekly claims are below the 220,000 typical before the pandemic struck the U.S. economy in March 2020.
In California, workers filed 50,900 initial claims for unemployment benefits during the week ending Jan. 1, an increase of about 2,100 from roughly 48,800 claims filed in the week ending Dec. 25, the U.S. Labor Department reported. The increase in California snapped a two-week span during which California workers filed fewer jobless claims.
The highly transmissible omicron variant so far does not appear to have triggered significant layoffs.
Altogether, nearly 1.8 million Americans were collecting traditional unemployment aid the week that ended Dec. 25. The job market has bounced back from last year’s brief but intense coronavirus recession. When COVID hit, governments ordered lockdowns, consumers hunkered down at home and many businesses closed or cut back hours. Employers slashed more than 22 million jobs in March and April 2020, and the unemployment rate rocketed to 14.8%.
The unemployment rate has fallen to 4.2%, close to what economists consider full employment.
The economy is still roughly 4 million jobs short of its pre-pandemic level, though some Fed policymakers increasingly believe that all those jobs may not be recovered, at least not anytime soon, as older Americans retire and some former workers stay home to take care of children.
Fed officials also voiced rising concerns about inflation, saying that faster rate hikes may be needed, and signaling that they could start reducing the Fed’s huge portfolio of bonds more quickly than expected. Those moves pushed down stock prices after the minutes were released.