The Los Angeles County Dept. of Public Health (Public Health) has confirmed 92 new deaths and 666 new cases of COVID-19. To date, Public Health identified 1,215,736 positive cases of COVID-19 across all areas of LA County and a total of 22,960 deaths.

There are 719 people with COVID-19 currently hospitalized and 25% of these people are in the ICU. Testing results are available for nearly 6,032,000 individuals with 19% of people testing positive. Today’s daily test positivity rate is 1.7%.

Public Health continues to track variant cases in Los Angeles County. Among 73 specimens analyzed at the Public Health laboratory this past week, 25 cases, or 34% of the specimens analyzed, were the California variant of concern, identified as B.1.427 or 429, and 21 cases, or 29% of the specimens analyzed, were the U.K. variant of concern, B.1.1.7. This means 63% of the variants sequenced this past week are variants of concern with the probability of increased transmissibility and more severe disease. Los Angeles County has yet to identify cases of the South African variant or the Brazilian variant of concern, the P.1 variant. Other variants of interest that were detected included eight cases of the New York variant and one case of the Brazilian variant of interest P.2. While these variants are still considered only variants of interest (and not variants of concern), their presence indicates transmission of mutated viruses from across the globe.

Cases among pregnant women in LA County continue to decline.

Although very rare, COVID-19 cases among children can sometimes result a few weeks later in very serious illness known as Multi-symptom Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C). To date, there are a total of 138 cases of MIS-C, including one child death in LA County. MIS-C cases sharply increased in January; this can be correlated with increased cases of COVID-19 during the surge that weeks later resulted in increased cases of MIS-C. There were 50 cases in January compared to 15 cases in December and 21 cases in February. The average age of children reported to have MIS-C is eight years, 11 months, but the range is wide, with children as young as 4 months and as old as 19 having MIS-C.  

Of the 92 new deaths reported on Wednesday, 39 people who died were over the age of 80, 23 people who died were between the ages of 65 and 79, 14 people who died were between the ages of 50 and 64, five people who died were between the ages of 30 and 49, one person who died was between the ages of 18 and 29, and one death is under investigation. Tragically, one youth under the age of 18 also passed away. Five deaths were reported by the City of Long Beach and three deaths were reported by the City of Pasadena.

The City of Glendale reports 19,427 cases, the City of La Cañada Flintridge reports 734 cases, Sunland reports 2,235 cases, Tujunga reports 2,852 cases and in the unincorporated portion of LA County, Angeles National Forest reports 33 cases and La Crescenta-Montrose reports 1,072 cases.