Los Angeles County reported 1,355 new cases of Covid on Friday, continuing the uptrend that began about a week ago as the more infectious sub-variant BA.2 continues to spread.
Last week, the county’s 7-day average daily number of new cases was 878. Until yesterday, the county reported an average of more than 1,000 new Covid cases per day.
It increases even more than the daily number of cases of the 7-day average daily frequency of people tested positive for the virus, a data point that is considered a more accurate indication of prevalence because, in addition to being average, it reports increasing and decreasing test numbers. This percentage remained stable below 1%, but rose to 1.7% on Thursday and reached 2.4% on Friday. The percentage is still low overall, but more than twice as high as a week ago and approximately three times as high as two weeks ago. This is a large increase for a number that averages 7 days.
The growing number of cases has not yet turned into a jump in hospitalizations and deaths, which optimists continue to point out as the region tries to return to normal after the Omicron winter wave. The number of Covid-positive patients in Los Angeles County has actually sunk today, and that’s the trend.
Last Friday, the number of patients with Covid-positive patients was 275. Today, the number is 228. That’s a drop of 17% in one week. Of these patients, 31 were treated in intensive care, compared to 32 on Thursday. Another 13 virus-related deaths were reported on Friday.
Sub-option BA.2, a more infectious offshoot of the Omicron variant that caused a winter jump in cases, is now the dominant strain of the virus in the county, according to public health officials. The latest data represent 67% of new infections, but these data are more than two weeks old, so the option is probably a much higher percentage of new cases so far.
There is speculation that BA.2, although more portable, is less virulent. In some regions, the increase in BA.2 cases has not been followed by an increase in hospitalizations and deaths. This difference from the Omicron winter wave is a cause for cautious optimism. But it is still too early to call everything for BA.2.
During a pandemic, hospitalizations usually followed an increase in daily incidence of about 2 weeks. It is believed that part of the increased ability of BA.2 to infect humans is a shorter incubation period, which means that hospitalizations increase earlier, between 10-14 days. So, given that the number of cases has started to rise sharply in the last week, any subsequent increase in hospitalizations is likely to occur at the end of next week or in the last week of April.
In fact, while some regions seem to have avoided an increase in hospitalizations, the United Kingdom – which often heralds trends in the state – has recently seen an increase in both hospitalizations and deaths.
Closer to home, New York began to see a steady increase in hospitalizations after an increase in infections and positive tests. The average number of hospitalizations for 7 days in the state was about 2,000 at the end of March, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. As of Wednesday, the last day for which data are available was over 5,600.
One variable in the mix is whether daily testing, which is at one of the lowest tides in about a month, captures exactly the current wave of new cases. The difference between the increase in the 7-day mean test positive and the 7-day mean number of cases seems to support this suspicion.
In addition, a new state study suggests that the number of people in Los Angeles County who were infected with Covid-19 during the pandemic is much higher than the number confirmed by standard tests. This is largely due to the number of people who have never developed symptoms and have never been tested, or who have not had access to tests, or who have tested positive at home and have never reported results.
City News Service contributed to this report.
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