L.A. County: Cases continue to fall; health officials are still advising caution

Coronavirus numbers continued to fall in Los Angeles County, officials said Monday, leading to the possibility that the county could soon be moved from the highest-risk of the state’s four tiers to the next, less-restrictive level.

Los Angeles County remains in the highest purple — or “widespread” — tier for case numbers, but is making progress in being moved down into the red tier — for “substantial” cases — health officials said.

While Monday’s numbers may be at least partially the result of scaled-back weekend record-keeping, they were nonetheless encouraging to officials.

Monday’s report showed

that another 13 people died from COVID-19, bringing the overall death toll to 22,041; and there were 880more new cases, bringing the countywide total to 1,204,018.

Meanwhile, hospitalizations in L. A. County also continued their steady decline, dipping to 1,119 patients, according to the state dashboard, with 334 in intensive care.

The county’s daily report did not include the latest numbers for Long Beach and Pasadena, cities that maintain their own independent health departments. Pasadena’s death toll remained at 320 on Monday, but 10 new cases raised the city’s total to 10,993 since the pandemic began. Long Beach’s totals, as of Saturday, were 863 deaths and 51,516 cases.

The county, said Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis, “is starting to see case rates that could potentially see the county move into the red tier.”

But the trends, she added, should not be taken as an opening to “let down our guard.”

She and Barbara Ferrer, director of Los Angeles County Public Health, said it remains important for people to wear face masks and to social distance when in public.

Still, the downturn in numbers, Ferrer said, was “wonderful news.”

She added: “We lost a lot of ground over the (winter) holidays and the consequences in our communities were horrific.”

Now, with the vaccines rolling out more extensively, Ferrer said, “We’re at a point in the pandemic where we have a great deal of optimism.”

Currently, she said, preparations are being made in the county to reopen seventh- through-12th- grade classrooms.

Secondary schools are more challenging than elementary grade levels, Ferrer said, but to more extra curricular activities and larger groups of students tending to intermingle.

“You’re not going to return to a school that looks like what it did when you left that school in March (2020),” she said. “The setting is going to look very different.

While the declining numbers have slowed a bit, Ferrer, responding to a media question, said the slowdown was not a cause for concern.

“We had a huge increase (over the winter) and then we had a steep decline and we needed that,” she said. “We’re settling in at slightly under 1,000 (new) cases a day.” As long as the numbers continue to go down, even if more slowly, Ferrer said, it’s a positive sign.

Those who have been vaccinated, she reminded the public, won’t be full protected until two weeks after the second shot (or two weeks after the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine).

Even after that, she said, vaccinated individuals should continue to wear masks, wash their hands frequently and practice social distancing in public.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Monday that fully vaccinated Americans can gather with other vaccinated people indoors without wearing a mask or social distancing, according to long-awaited guidance from federal health officials.

The recommendations also say that vaccinated people can come together in the same way — in a single household — with people considered at low-risk for severe disease, such as in the case of vaccinated grandparents visiting healthy children and grandchildren.

The CDC is continuing to recommend that fully vaccinated people still wear well-fitted masks, avoid large gatherings, and physically distance themselves from others when out in public.

Ferrer and other local officials echoed that guidance on Monday.

“Vaccinated grandparents can visit with unvaccinated grandchildren as long as the children do not have underlying conditions,” she said.

Gathering with multiple households that aren’t fully vaccinated, however, should still include practicing all preventative measures, Ferrer added.

She also cautioned about variants and other states that are less restrictive than California.

“Los Angeles County does not exist in a bubble,” Ferrer said. “We can’t be complacent. Vaccines provide a powerful layer of protection, but we don’t have enough people vaccinated” yet to do away with the other preventative tools.

“We are not yet on the other side,” she said. “But we’re getting close.”