LA County notes alarming COVID-19 surge in more than a dozen communities

LOS ANGELES (CNS) — Again warning of a “real and alarming'” surge in COVID-19 cases, La County’s public health director said Monday the county is vastly expanding its community outreach efforts to educate residents about slowing transmission of the virus, particularly in hard-hit areas.

Barbara Ferrer noted that some individual communities within the county are seeing disturbingly high case rates.

Pacoima topped the list of most-impacted communities, with an adjusted rate over two weeks of 506 cases per 100, 000 residents. That’s more than double the countywide rate of 188 cases per 100, 000 residents.

Sun Valley was second on the list, with 456 cases per 100, 000 residents, followed by Palmdale at 406.

Other communities on the list were East Los Angeles, Van Nuys, El Monte, Downey, Pomona, North Hollywood, Glendale, Santa Clarita, South Gate, Florence-Firestone, Canoga Park and Panorama City.

“For everyone who’s living in these communities, please note you’ll need to take extra precautions, ” Ferrer said. “And if you’ve had an exposure, you should know that there’s plenty of testing available so you can go in immediately and find a place to get tested. ”

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She said no specific reasons have been identified in the hard-hit communities to explain why they’ve got such higher case rates. Though the county is expanding its World Health Worker Outreach Initiative, who sends health workers to interact with residents and provide them with virus documents or connect them with resources.

The county had roughly 60 people assigned to that challenging, but last week it trained the other 170 staffers who will begin fanning out this week, “to amplify most messaging and provide general education throughout everybody who lives in communities having a a disproportionately high burden of ailments, ” Ferrer said.

A large part of that messaging being warnings against gatherings that the health of the people officials are blaming for fueling the surge that has seen the most important county reporting more than 2, 1000 virus cases daily since tardy last week, including 4, 600 over the weekend.

“These information are demonstrating real and challenging increases, and the next two weeks is actually crucial, ” she said. “As we go into our cooler nyc and many holidays, we are increasingly concerned about more and more transmission of the virus plus hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19. ”

The county branded a relatively low 1, 413 newer cases on Monday, but Tuesday case numbers are typically low as a consequence of lags in test-result reporting around the weekend. The new cases lifted some of the county’s cumulative total to 323, 625 since the pandemic began.

Another five coronavirus-related deaths were reported by the county Sunday, lifting the overall death toll towards 7, 177. There were 855 somebody hospitalized with the virus as of Wednesday.

Ferrer made the opposite public plea for residents to stick to health restrictions and avoid gatherings.

“This isn’t a blip any further, ” she said. “This basically, ‘Oh we had one bad quick break and we’re now getting it once again under control. ‘ This is now an outburst in our cases and if it remains it will be quite alarming to go on to our coldest months seeing such a level of increase of cases. ”

She shown the county doesn’t want to be in place of having to shut down more small-businesses, saying if residents take infection-control measures seriously, it will slow this spread of the virus. But if it doesn’t, action could be taken.

“Otherwise, we’re really looking at very troubling times for the winter ahead, a long time that could in fact threaten our or simply system again. And that’s something that we may not be able to tolerate. ”

Ferrer said the county can be at a “pivotal point. ”

“There is no real steps forward until we get back to slowing the spread, ” she said. “We don’t have the luxury of ignoring many individual and collective responsibilities if we like to see more children go to school in general and our businesses remain on hand. Recovery just doesn’t continue when you experience thousands of new cases each day, lots of these cases stem from men or women taking risks that are frankly but not appropriate. It isn’t that hard to be by the rules, especially since the following rules are what keep several of us alive and allow our economy to alter. ”

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