The Los Angeles County Public Health Department announced Monday that COVID-19 cases had increased tenfold in one month, as the region continues to suffer from the omicron variant surge.
However, county statistics revealed that the test positivity rate had declined somewhat in recent days, a sign that the surge may be peaking.
In a press statement, the county said:
LA County is reporting 31,576 new COVID-19 cases, nearly 10 times the number of cases reported one month ago on December 17th when Public Health reported 3,360 new cases. There are also 27 new deaths due to COVID-19 in Los Angeles County. The number of cases and deaths are likely to reflect reporting delays over the holiday weekend.
There are 4,564 people with COVID-19 currently hospitalized, nearly 6 times the number from one month ago when 772 people were hospitalized. The daily positivity rate is 16.5%, more than 8 times the 2% daily positivity rate on December 17th.
The total number of deaths in the county since the start of the pandemic is 28,086.
Two weeks ago, the test positivity rate exceeded 20% in the county over several days. The seven-day test positivity rate remains at 20.85%, as of January 9, but the daily rate fell below 20% on January 12 and has declined on each day since then.
The county has some of the most restrictive coronavirus policies in the nation, though it is not clear how strictly they are being observed or enforced.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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