The Mayor of Los Angeles County Eric Garcetti has said that the COVID19 pandemic is taking a serious toll on the city as the virus spreads quite faster through the households and residents let their guard down. He has claimed that the world’s most populated city has been reporting a new case of COVID19 every six seconds. Eric Garcetti has said that the news of vaccine rollout has made people relaxed and they have stopped taking precautionary measures hoping that the vaccine will protect them from contracting the virus. He has said that this is not the time people should relax as this virus preys on people’s weaknesses and exhaustion. Although the county has seen high obedience of mask-wearing and people have been abiding by the stay home orders, but still, the state continues to report enormous numbers of new cases. Around 12400 new cases have been reported in Los Angeles County alone. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has said that this is the fastest pace of new cases since the pandemic has started. The county has a population of 40 million people, which is a fourth of the state’s total population. In Los Angeles County, around 40 percent have COVID19 patients have lost their lives.
The State Department of Public Health has said that the state has seen another 181 deaths and nearly 45350 new confirmed cases on Sunday, which brings the total number of state’s COVID cases to 2.4 million. More than 26530 people have lost their lives due to the disease in California, which makes it the third state to cross 25000 deaths since the outbreak has hit the US. As per the data from John Hopkins University, New York has reported around 38000 deaths due to the virus and Texas has seen more than 27000 deaths so far. The officials from San Bernardino County, east of Los Angeles have said that they have found two confirmed cases of the new strain of the virus, which seems to be more infectious than the original one. There have been four confirmed cases of the new strain of the virus in San Diego County. The new variant of the virus has been identified in Colorado and Florida as well. Health experts have confirmed that two confirmed cases of the new mutant virus have been found in the same household in the Big Bear area of San Bernardino County. The San Bernardino County Department of Public Health has said that one of the patients has contracted the virus from a traveler, who has returned from the UK. The patient who has caught the virus has started showing symptoms of the disease three days after contracting the virus.
Health officials have been investigating whether the traveler who has returned from the UK is a resident of the Big Bear area. They are also examining whether the person who has returned from the UK has been infected with the new strain of the virus. The officials from Governor Gavin Newsom’s office have said that California’s Fire and Rescue Mutual Aid System, which is usually used in response to wildfires, floods, and natural calamities will help those hospitals which have stretched their capacity. Paramedics and emergency medical workers are being sent out for a 14-day operational period to help emergency rooms and other hospital sectors that are dealing with a lack of staffing. As per the state records, more than 26000 people have been hospitalized across California on Sunday, whereas 4500 people have been admitted to the intensive care unit. In the San Francisco Bay Area, there has been a COVID19 outbreak at the Kaiser Permanente San Jose Emergency Department, where are around 44 staff members have been infected with the disease. The southern states of the US have been majorly impacted by the latest surge in cases from the agricultural San Joaquin Valley to the Mexico border. Hospitals in these states are flooded with COVID19 patients and intensive care units are struggling with the lack of beds for patients who have been recently diagnosed with the virus. Ambulances are forced to wait in bays for more than eight hours before transferring patients inside hospitals. In some cases, doctors have no choice other than to treat the patients inside the ambulance. Officials have said that there has been an increase in cases among homeless people around Los Angeles County, which has overwhelmed the health system. The rate of infection has increased significantly among homeless people after Thanksgiving and since then it has continued to shoot up.
