SURGE APPEARS TO BE SUBSIDING: (from the Pasadena Star-News): The winter surge that filled emergency rooms and hospital beds with COVID-19 patients in late December through January and into early February is over.
As Southern California enters the post-omicron surge phase, oncejammed hospitals are seeing fewer than half the number of infected patients while incidents of infection in Southern California counties have dropped by as much as 90%. With hospitalization rates the most important metric cited by experts, Los Angeles County has had more than seven consecutive days of fewer than 2,500 hospitalizations. By meeting that target, the county has lifted the masking
Cases in the most populated county in Southern California have fallen 93% since the omicron variant’s high watermark on Jan. 7, she said.
While L.A. and other counties report sharp drops in confirmed cases, indicating a slowing of community transmission, the numbers of cases are still elevated.
L.A. County officials predict it will sustain “moderate transmission” rates (50 cases per 100,00 residents) for seven consecutive days by mid-tolate March, and at that time the county health department could lift indoor mask requirements, Ferrer said.
Doctors and hospital CEOs said the omicron variant came on strong and quickly drove up caseloads, but it behaved like a tornado, rapidly infecting mostly unvaccinated and other vulnerable populations at the height of the viral storm, but exiting the region almost as quickly.
The good news can be heard from all corners of the medical establishment in Southern California:
- L.A. County has seen a 65% drop in COVID-19 patients in hospitals during the past 30 days, county health reported Thursday.
- In Orange County, the number of COVID-19 patients in a hospital bed has dropped by about 66% since the middle of January, Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, deputy health officer for the Orange County Health Care Agency, said Friday. “Overall, the decrease in hospitalization is reassuring.”
- In Riverside County, hospitalized COVID-19 patients fell by 54% from Jan. 24 to Monday, Jose Arballo Jr., spokesperson for Riverside County’s public health department, said. “That indicates to us the impact of the omicron surge has dropped,” he said.
- In San Bernardino County, hospitalized patients fell 52% from Jan. 31 to Tuesday, according to data from the California Department of Public Health. The drop-off accelerated in the past two weeks, data shows.
Kaiser Permanente’s 15 hospitals in Southern California experienced a 30% decline in COVID-19 patients from Feb. 1 to Wednesday, as compared to Jan. 1 to Jan. 16.
L.A. County, death rates are still high, but they have begun to come down. They dropped slightly to 65 new deaths in a seven-day average reported Wednesday, from an average of 73 reported on Feb. 9. The county reached a grim milestone last week with more than 30,000 people dying from COVID-19 since the pandemic began.
Riverside County is seeing its new deaths average out about the same, from 15 on Jan. 27 to 14 new deaths on average on Thursday. San Bernardino County had 5.6 new deaths on average on Thursday, up from 3.1 on Feb. 9. Orange County had 24 new deaths on average on Feb. 10, dropping to 20 on Friday.
Unvaccinated children remain at risk
A particularly worrisome aspect of the omicron surge was the increase in children getting sick. Elementary schools accounted for the bulk of K-12 student cases in L.A. County, the county health department reported.
From Jan. 10 to Jan. 16, L.A. County reported 21,000 cases of COVID-19 among elementary school students, 11,000 high schoolers and 9,200 middle schoolers. By Feb. 13, cases dropped to 1,650 elementary, 810 high school and 648 middle school.
Unvaccinated children — who are two to three times more likely to become infected when compared to those fully vaccinated — accounted for the spike in school-age cases, Ferrer said. Only 26% of 5- to 11-year-olds are fully vaccinated in L.A. County.
Orange County hospitals went from 69 pediatric hospitalizations on Jan. 13, including 17 in ICU, to 19 overall on Friday, including four in ICU, Chinsio-Kwong said.
Still, during the winter surge, California had the least amount of school disruptions (closures, all-virtual learning, delayed openings) than any state in the union, Ferrer said.
From the Pasadena Star-News: The omicron wave is breaking, but deaths, which lag cases by as much as several weeks, have surpassed the numbers from the delta wave and are still increasing in much of the country.
In 14 states, the average daily death toll is higher now than it was two weeks ago. They are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Maine, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia. Since Nov. 24, the United States has confirmed more than 30,163,600 new infections and more than 154,750 new deaths.
By comparison, from Aug. 1 to Oct. 31, a similar duration covering the worst of the delta surge in the United States, the country confirmed 10,917,590 new infections and 132,616 new deaths.
That makes the official case count about 176% higher during the omicron wave than in the equivalentlength delta period. (The true case count is higher still, because, more so than during the delta wave, many people have been using at-home tests whose results are not included in government statistics.) The death toll during the omicron wave is about 17% higher so far than the death toll in the delta wave.
On one hand, the gap between the increase in cases and the increase in deaths reflects omicron’s somewhat lower virulence compared with previous variants, as well as that omicron is far more likely to cause breakthrough infections in vaccinated people, who are far less likely to die from it than unvaccinated people. Deaths also remain lower than in last winter’s surge, before vaccines were widely available: 233,102 deaths were reported from Nov. 24, 2020, to Feb. 18, 2021, compared with 154,757 from Nov. 24, 2021, to Feb. 18, 2022.
But the painful absolute numbers — more than 150,000 Americans dead — underscore the country’s continuing vulnerability.
PPP Loans: Almost 350,000 loans made to small businesses in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic haven’t been forgiven, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of Paycheck Protection Program data, and most of them are for less than $25,000.
That lingering debt — about $28 billion, the analysis shows — is creating a burden for the smallest businesses, including many run by minority entrepreneurs, say advocacy groups, community leaders and business owners. Many are struggling with the process of seeking forgiveness under terms of the loan program that distributed more than $800 billion over two years.
Unlike traditional loans, those given as part of the pandemic relief program can be forgiven if certain conditions are met. Proceeds had to be spent on payroll and other eligible expenses within a designated time frame, for example. But some borrowers who say they meet the criteria are struggling with technical snafus, onerous documentation requirements and confusing websites.
Mask Mandates - The state of California lifted its COVID-19 indoor mask-wearing requirement for vaccinated people Wednesday, but Pasadena will continue enforcing its own indoor face-covering rule.
Local health departments are permitted to enforce stricter standards than state minimums.
The city however did move ahead with a new health order relaxing mask requirements outdoors at K-12 schools and child care facilities effective just after midnight Wednesday, Pasadena Public Health Director Dr. Ying-Ying Goh confirmed.
The city has also already posted changes to its definitions of large events which require masking. As of February 16, the new order redefines outdoor mega-events as those events with 10,000 or more attendees, and indoor mega-events as those with 1,000 or more attendees.
Los Angeles County similarly has not followed the state’s relaxation of indoor masking for the vaccinated, despite growing dissent among the Board of Supervisors.
With Los Angeles County’s outdoor masking mandate for schools and large events disappearing as of 12:01 a.m. today, the county’s health director faced renewed calls Tuesday to immediately relax the rules for indoor settings, in line with the state’s now less-stringent guidance.
It’s a prospect she said is being considered, with options for some sites to come as early as next week.
The lifting of the outdoor mandate was encouraging news. In effect, the county has officially reached the postwinter surge stage, a result of rapidly dropping hospitalizations, which on Tuesday had fallen to 1,995, 59 fewer than the day before. It means that today will mark seven consecutive days of coronavirus hospitalizations below 2,500, a key threshold set in place two weeks ago.
The county on Tuesday, meanwhile, reported 55 more COVID-19-related deaths, raising the overall virus death toll to 29,980. Another 2,133 coronavirus cases were announced, giving the county a cumulative total of 2,766,161 from throughout the pandemic.
Ferrer noted there are still high numbers of outbreaks across “all sectors of the economy” and lackluster vaccination rates that show children ages 5 to 12 as among the least vaccinated in the region, with 1 in 4 fully vaccinated.
The Economy: Prices were rising fast, products were in short supply, and the omicron variant put a chill on the country at the start of the year. Through it all, American consumers kept spending. Retail sales rose 3.8% in January from the prior month, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday, a faster than expected rebound from a sharp decline in December and another sign of the economy’s resilience even as stores shortened their hours or closed as a surge in COVID- 19 infections led to widespread staffing shortages. Wednesday’s sales data echoed a report that showed hiring was stronger than anticipated last month, with employers adding 467,000 jobs. Other factors were at play, too, most notably fast-rising prices. The retail sales data wasn’t adjusted to account for inflation, and that could continue to boost the sales figures for months to come, economists said.