Cases: The BA.2 subvariant is now believed to be the dominant COVID-19 strain circulating in Los Angeles County — though hospitalization figures remain low and the death rate keeps declining, the County’s public health director said.
Official figures released by Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer on Thursday showed that the highly infectious BA.2 subvariant — an offshoot of the Omicron variant that fueled the winter surge in cases — accounted for 47% of all infections in the county that underwent specialized testing to identify virus strains. But she said that percentage was based on cases from two weeks ago, and BA.2 is likely now responsible for more than half of the county’s infections.
Last week, BA.2 represented about 32% of infections in the county, double the 16% rate from the week prior.
While Pasadena has not recorded a significant uptick in new confirmed cases of COVID, with the city’s 7-day average number of new cases during the first week of April rising from 13.9 to 15.7, the county has. The spread of the infectious variant is being blamed.
Ferrer noted that over the last seven days, the county has been averaging 878 new cases per day, up from 660 per day the previous week — a roughly 33% increase.
But while the increase in cases is disturbing, the rise has not translated into surges of hospital patients, or in the actual rate of people testing positive for the virus, which remains at about 1%. Ferrer said the number of COVID-positive patients in county hospitals has remained below 300 — reaching 273 as of Thursday, according to state figures. And the daily number of deaths attributed to the virus continues falling, averaging 13 per day over the past week, compared to 17 per day a week earlier.
Los Angeles County reported a total of 1,088 new cases on Thursday, bringing the pandemic total in the county to 2,839,480. Another 15 deaths were recorded, raising the cumulative death toll to 31,754.
Of the 273 COVID-positive people currently hospitalized — a drop from 292 on Wednesday — 38 were being treated in intensive care, down from 42 a day earlier.
Comparing overall death numbers, the county experienced 16,566 “excess” deaths overall in 2020 — the year the pandemic began — compared to 2019. Ferrer said 67% of those excess deaths are attributable to COVID-19.
Of course there would be another variant-Focus is on latest version of virus: Omicron subvariant XE appears more transmissible, but its trajectory is unclear. By Rong-Gong Lin II for the LA Times. Even as the highly contagious Omicron subvariant BA.2 is increasingly dominating California and the U.S., an even more potentially contagious subvariant, XE, has attracted the attention of global scientists.
Early estimates as noted by the World Health Organization say XE may be 10% more transmissible than BA.2, but it’s too soon to say whether XE will become the next prolific Omicron subvariant that will become another household name.
The British government has also noted that data showing XE’s growth rate advantage over BA.2 have not remained consistent, so more data will be needed to assess XE’s likely future trajectory.
XE was first detected in Britain on Jan. 19, the WHO said. And more than 700 cases of XE have been reported in Britain, with more than 600 of them in England, according to British authorities .
There have not been significant case numbers of the XE subvariant in countries outside of Britain, Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Tuesday. To date, there have been only three cases of XE reported in the U.S., with none in California, she said.
The preliminary data available so far suggest XE “is going to be easier to catch,” UC San Francisco infectious-disease expert Dr. Peter Chin-Hong said in an interview, adding that people who are vaccinated and boosted should have a relatively lower risk of suffering hospitalization and death, as is the case with other Omicron subvariants.
XE likely developed from someone who was co- infected with BA.2 and the earlier Omicron subvariant, BA.1, Chin-Hong said. BA.2 is more contagious than BA.1, and BA.1 was more contagious than the variant that swept the globe last summer, Delta. So XE is essentially “a child of BA.1 and BA.2 that came together and had a recombinant event. So it arose in one person, and it just spread more easily,” Chin-Hong said. XE likely represents about 1% of new cases in Britain, he said.
That means identifying the latest subvariant or variant might take longer to identify than before, Chin-Hong said. It’s also possible XE could fizzle out, such as the so-called “ Deltacron ” subvariants — mishmashes of the Delta and Omicron variants — that gained attention last month but faded from the public view.
The “Deltacron” subvariants are known as XD and XF, Chin-Hong said. At a briefing to UC San Francisco colleagues last week, infectious-disease expert and epidemiologist Dr. George Rutherford said XD had elements of its genetic material from Delta and Omicron’s BA.1 subvariant, and XF is mostly BA.1 but has some elements of Delta.
Scientists say the increasing prolificness of new variants is expected when more people are contracting the coronavirus. The more infections there are, the greater the chance new strains will develop. Strains that combine aspects of more than one strain are yet another reason to stay vigilant about COVID-19, said Orange County health officer Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong.
The Economy: (From the Pasadena Star-News, reported by Kevin Smith): Los Angeles County and several other metropolitan areas in California will reach pre-pandemic employment levels by early 2023, according to Beacon Economics.
The Golden State’s overall jobs recovery has been slower than that of some other states because of high housing costs and more stringent COVID-19 protections, among other factors.
Beacon’s analysis spotlights steady job gains in L.A. County, San Diego, San Francisco, the South Bay region of Silicon Valley and the East Bay, while also illustrating the ground these urban cores need to make up to regain their job base.
In March, the state Employment Development Department released revisions to its monthly employment estimates for 2021 that show L.A. County’s labor market has been recovering faster than originally thought.
Prior to the revision, the county’s nonfarm employment growth came in at just 1.3% from December 2020 to December 2021. After the revision, the annual growth rate jumped to 3.1%.
“While there is still a considerable amount of lost ground to recover, economic conditions in Los Angeles County have gradually continued to improve,” the report said.
More recent EDD data shows L.A. County added 61,100 jobs in February, bringing the county’s total employment base to 4,462,500. Unemployment dropped to 6.4% from 10.7% a year earlier.
The hardest hit: Beacon said the county’s recovery has been slowed by strict pandemic- related mandates and its diverse mix of jobs, which skews heavily toward services and hospitality.
Hotels and restaurants were among the hardest hit during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic as temporary closures and heavy restrictions were put in place.
But the county’s economy is on an upward trajectory.
Struggling to hire: Many businesses are struggling to fill all of their openings amid the current labor shortage. L.A. County posted a year-over-year job gain of 9.1% in January, nearly double the national growth rate of 4.7%.But the region is still in recovery mode and has more ground to cover compared to neighboring counties.
The report says California needs to build more housing, a move that would increase home affordability for all residents.
That can be accomplished by reducing home building fees and permit costs, reforming policies that restrict home building (such as the California Environmental Quality Act), and by eliminating policies like Proposition 13 that incentivize local governments to implement costly home building fees.
Unemployment: U.S. jobless claims at lowest level since ’68: Fewer Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week as layoffs remain at historically low levels. Jobless claims fell by 5,000 to 166,000 for the week ending April 2, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The previous week’s number was revised down a whopping 31,000 claims.
Last week’s claims match the figure from two weeks ago, which is the lowest since November of 1968 when 162,000 people filed for unemployment benefits, according to historical government data. First-time applications for jobless aid generally represent the pace of layoffs.
The four-week average for claims, which compensates for weekly volatility, fell by 8,000 to 170,000 from the previous week’s 178,000, which was revised down by 30,500.
In total, 1,523,000 Americans were collecting jobless aid for the week ending March 26, an increase of 17,000 from the previous week, which was the lowest in more than 50 years.
Last week, the Labor Department reported that U.S. employers extended a streak of robust hiring, adding 431,000 jobs in March and pushing the unemployment rate down to 3.6%. Despite the inflation surge, persistent supply bottlenecks, damage from COVID-19 and now a war in Europe, employers have added at least 400,000 jobs for 11 straight months.
Job openings hovered at a near-record level in February, little changed from the previous month, continuing a trend that Federal Reserve officials see as a driver of inflation. There were 11.3 million available jobs last month, matching January’s figure, the Labor Department reported last week.