L.A. County reports 1,096 virus cases, urges shots

Los Angeles County health officials reported another 1,096 coronavirus cases on Friday, while again urging folks to get the vaccine booster shot — which, they say, provides strong protection for older residents against severe illness from an infection.

The new cases gave the county a cumulative total from throughout the pandemic of 3,694,317. The daily case numbers released by the county are undercounts of actual virus activity, though, because of people who use at-home tests and don't report the results, and others who don't test at all.

The 17 new virus-related fatalities, meanwhile, brought the county's COVID-19 death toll to 35,545.

There were 687 COVID19-positive patients in Los Angeles County hospitals as of Friday, down from 699 on Thursday, according to state figures. Of those patients, 75 were being treated in intensive care units, down from 85 a day earlier.

Touting the benefits of the latest COVID-19 vaccine, county health officials said on Friday that older residents inoculated with the bivalent booster shot are dramatically less likely to be hospitalized or die if they are infected with the virus.

Unvaccinated adults who are at least 80 years old were more than three times as likely to be hospitalized and more than 5 ½ times as likely to die than those who had received the bivalent booster, the county said. For people 65 to 79 years old, unvaccinated people were 12 times more likely to be hospitalized than those with the latest booster shot, and nearly 16 times more likely to die, according to the Department of Public Health.

“The data clearly shows that the bivalent booster provides substantial protection against hospitalization and death across all age groups, and this is especially important for older residents who face the (greatest) risks,” Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said in a Friday statement. “While the continued affirmation that our vaccines and the new bivalent booster work well is great news, it is also distressing to know that resources that help prevent death are available, and that they are not being taken full advantage of.”

The county's current seven-day rate of infections was 72 new cases per 100,000 people, roughly stable with the previous week, the county health agency said Friday. The seven-day rate of new COVID-19-related hospital admissions was 7.5 per 100,000 residents, up slightly from 7 the previous week.