Over 16,000 New Covid Cases Have So Far Not Resulted in An Increase in the Daily Rate of Death

December 29, 2021 - The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health announced a sharp increase in Covid cases today, with 16,510 new positive cases identified. Officials pointed out this is nearly double the number of new daily cases just a week ago. A month ago, the number of new daily cases was 843.

So far the number of daily deaths is remaining low, at about the same rate as it was a month ago. Today 25 Covid deaths were reported in the county, 21 of them involving underlying conditions and 17 of them occurred in individuals over 65 years of age.

County health officials say the present surge is caused by a mixture of the Delta and Omicron variants. In the week ending December 18, 54% of sequenced cases in LA County were Omicron. This is roughly the same as the estimate by the Centers for Disease Control of the country as a whole for new Covid cases, with 59% thought to be Omicron and 41% believed to be caused by the Delta variant.

While no new health orders have been given, health officials recommend residents take additional precautions, including:

Scale down New Year's plans, limiting gatherings to a very small number of people where everyone is fully vaccinated and boosted if eligible.

Wear a medical-grade mask indoors if gathering with people outside of your household

Get vaccinated and obtain boosters if eligible

While the rate of death has not picked up in response to the increase in cases at this point, the number of people hospitalized has risen to 1,069. A week ago there were 748 people in the hospital with Covid.