The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (Public Health) has confirmed 142 new deaths and 29,464 new cases of confirmed COVID-19. The numbers today reflect 13,185 cases reported today and 15,538 cases from yesterday along with 131 deaths yesterday and 5 deaths reported today. Yesterday’s case numbers were delayed due to the service interruption caused by an outage with Spectrum Service in the Los Angeles area. The number of deaths reported today are an undercount due to the reporting lag associated with the Spectrum outage and the Christmas holiday.
To date, Public Health has identified 706,448 positive cases of COVID-19 across all areas of L.A. County and a total of 9,438 deaths.
There are currently 6,770 people currently hospitalized with COVID-19, and 20% of these people are in the ICU.
In order for us to stop the surge, L.A. County residents will need to use the tools at hand to slow community transmission and reduce the number of infected people. The strategies that work remain the same: no gatherings/events with others outside of your immediate household, always and correctly wear face coverings/masks when around others, and always maintain your physical distance from others who are not from your household. During this surge, everyone should also stay at home except to provide or receive essential services, avoid all non-essential travel, get tested if you have symptoms or an exposure, and isolate immediately from your family and others if you have symptoms or test positive for COVID-19. If we take these actions, we will save lives.
