![]() Ashwin Vasan said the city raised its COVID-19 threat level based on the increasing case rate, which last week was 218 weekly cases for every 100,000 residents. The virus is mutating rapidly and is likely to render vaccines and treatments less and less effective.Īt a press briefing Monday, New York City health commissioner Dr. Opinion Op-Ed: COVID vaccines need to be evolving much faster Clayton Chau, director of the Orange County Health Care Agency. Hospitalizations remain low, but because it can take two weeks for newly reported cases to escalate to more severe illness, “we are nervously watching” hospital numbers, said Dr. Orange County is also seeing an increase in cases, from about 280 a day to 330 over the past week, a rate of 73 new cases a week for every 100,000 residents. “With high transmission comes the risk of breeding new variants of concern, the possibility of more people experiencing long COVID and increased risk among those more vulnerable to severe illness should they become infected,” she said. Still, Ferrer said in a statement Monday that the rise in case rates is worrisome because it “causes substantial disruption and leads to a vicious cycle of more transmission.” In fact, most patients are there for reasons unrelated to their coronavirus infection, she said. County’s massive public hospital system, coronavirus-positive hospitalizations have been steady and relatively low, according to Health Services Director Dr. County, nearly 3 million residents still haven’t completed their primary vaccination series, and hundreds of thousands of vaccinated seniors haven’t received their first booster shot. “Our challenge now is to confront the complacency and significant fatigue that all of us feel, and we just have to continue with a layered approach: masking, vaccination, testing and improving ventilation.” We are continuing to see new variants emerge and spread,” Cody said. “The take-home message here is that we do need to continue to pay attention. Wearing masks in indoor public settings - something California strongly recommends, but does not require - will add another layer of protection. Vaccines and boosters still reduce the risk of infection and do a really good job at curtailing severe illness and death, Cody said. “And if that’s not going to hold true again - which it might not - then we again have to reemphasize how important it is for people to get vaccinated even if they’ve been infected.”Ĭalifornia New coronavirus variants emerge: BA.4, BA.5 likely reinfecting Omicron survivorsīA.4 and BA.5 appear to be more transmissible than the original Omicron variant and have a better shot at evading existing immunity, given a new surge in South Africa. “That would actually be hugely problematic because we generally count on people having at least a couple of months of immunity, but we also count on there being less reinfections within one type, one strain of the virus,” Ferrer said. More troubling still are indications that the two subvariants are able to reinfect people who previously survived an infection with Omicron. And the new BA.2.12.1 subvariant - or “grandchild” of the original Omicron - is 25% more contagious than BA.2.Īnd officials say yet another pair of Omicron subvariants, BA.4 and BA.5, is responsible for a surge in cases and hospitalizations in South Africa. Its “child,” as Cody referred to a subsequent subvariant called BA.2, is about 30% more transmissible than the parent. The latest maps and charts on the spread of COVID-19 in Los Angeles County, including cases, deaths, closures and restrictions. ![]() I just think that’s common sense right now.” “And this is not going to be forever, but when you have this much transmission, let’s be sensible and try to do our very best to avoid getting infected and avoid infecting others. It protects you, and it protects other people, and it’s not all that disruptive,” she said during a briefing Wednesday. But whatever term you want to use, she said, the growth in cases is cause for caution. Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said she wouldn’t necessarily characterize the recent increases as a new wave or surge. We didn’t get much of a lull before cases started rising again.” “It’s notable because it’s come relatively quickly after resolution of the last surge. Sara Cody, the public health director and health officer for Northern California’s most populous county, Santa Clara County, said Tuesday. ![]()
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