Los Angeles Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer today gave Angelinos a ray of hope about the looming prospect of a countywide universal mask mandate next week.
While he countered his statement with “I think it’s very likely we’ll remain in High” — meaning the CDC’s high community category — “should we start seeing a sharp decline in our [case] numbers next week, since we know hospitalizations are that lagging indicator, we’ll probably want to stop moving too quickly with universal indoor masking. Because if our cases start to plummet, it’s likely that our hospitalizations will plummet [two weeks later].”
Hospitalizations are the primary measure by which the CDC determines community rates.
Ferrer then offered this observation: “You’re all looking at the same numbers I’m looking at. You can see that we are on the threshold between medium and high. It won’t take long to get back to that community average if we can reduce the number of cases.”
The county’s daily case count hit a six-month high on Thursday at 8,691, but Ferrer said today that the number of Covids in the sewage offered some hope.
“We may see a plateau or even a slight decline in the plants that serve the western parts of the county,” she pointed out.
Sewage is thought to be among the most reliable measures of disease spread, especially since so many people use home tests, the results of which go unreported.
Still, with the positive test rate rising to 16.4% today, the transmission momentum may be too strong for the number of cases to drop significantly anytime soon.
If necessary, masking will begin next Friday, July 29.
Earlier in the day, an alliance of business groups in Los Angeles County today called on health officials to abandon plans for the mask mandate, saying the move would be “onerous” and a burden on businesses that would be forced to enforce the rule.
“This is not a debate about a choice between life and livelihood,” Tracy Hernandez, CEO of the Los Angeles County Business Federation, or BizFed, said in a statement.
“This is a discussion about educating and empowering Angelenos to make smart choices to protect their health, our workers, and the region’s collective ability to weather this latest wave of infections.” We can do better than a tough mandate at this stage of pandemic recovery and endemic recalibration.”
City News Service contributed to this report.
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