Los Angeles County officially ends its COVID-19 emergency declaration on Friday, a milestone that comes as the region’s coronavirus case rate fell to its lowest point since the summer of 2021.
It may be appropriate for the nation’s most populous county to delay in filing its local declaration, doing so a month after the state. The county has been one of the hardest-hit spaces in California, so much so that the National Guard had to send corpses from battered hospital morgues in the first winter of the pandemic. Officials also led the country to sound the alarm about the danger posed by the Delta Variant, which prompted significant construction the following summer.
But Los Angeles County fitness officials, like their counterparts across the state, say the local declaration has served its purpose and that the region is now in a position to enter a promising new phase.
“While it remains imperative to continue the spread of COVID-19 in our homes, workplaces and communities, we no longer want to rely on emergency orders to ensure we have and can use important equipment and mitigation strategies,” Public Health said. Director Barbara Ferrer said this month. ” Investments to date have resulted in physically powerful tracking methods, sufficient testing capacity, and effective vaccines and treatments. “
For much of the public, there will be few quick changes. The county’s public fitness branch will continue to provide COVID-19 vaccines, tests and loose treatments.
The county’s maximum eye health care mandate, a universal mask order in enclosed public spaces, was lifted thirteen months ago. And two months ago he finalized a face-covering tip for the general public.
The pandemic saga, however, is still being written. And its power, though forceful, has not dissipated.
“We will have to remain vigilant,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s technical lead on COVID-19. “On the one hand, we are in a much bigger situation. On the other hand, we cannot be waiting with absolute certainty how this pandemic will develop, that this virus is here to stay.
But just as March 2020 is now indelibly etched into our collective consciousness, a defining moment when life came to an abrupt halt, March 2023 can be remembered as the moment when COVID-19 officially passed from head to base.
An update that will take effect Monday is the end, in both Los Angeles County and California, of the government-mandated COVID-19 vaccination requirement for staff in adult care facilities, jails and prisons. Individual corporations or other establishments may still have vaccination requirements. .
Most fitness staff want to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Federal regulations apply to fitness services that pay Medicare and Medicaid money.
Also on Monday, California will mandate that everyone wear masks in gyms.
The county of L. A. ne that’s it. Authorities will lift an order for the use of masks for visitors and patients at fitness facilities, but will maintain the requirement that fitness staff provide patient care or run in patient areas.
“Everything we know right now indicates that those masks offer protection. And we don’t have a lot of physical care providers who say they don’t think they have to wear those masks,” Ferrer said. Simply transmitting the coronavirus to a vulnerable patient can “lead to severe and devastating illness. “
The passage from shock to coexistence with COVID-19 is reflected in the consistent outcome of the rules and emergency declarations that set in motion the first blows of the pandemic.
In late February, Gov. Gavin Newsom officially rescinded California’s three-year-old state emergency declaration. President Biden has previously informed Congress that he will rescind national emergency and public fitness declarations on May 11, even though congressional Republicans are pushing to do so sooner.
The arrival of spring has ushered in rosy situations in California, with all 58 counties recording low transmission and hospitalization rates at the network level.
This category, explained through the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The U. S. Food and Drug Administration indicates that the coronavirus is spreading at an immediate rate or in a way that puts undue pressure on the health care system.
Los Angeles County’s coronavirus case count is the lowest since July 2021, some time after the first wave of widespread vaccinations and before the arrival of the Delta variant. day, or 35 instances per week per 100,000 inhabitants.
COVID-19 continues to wreak fatal havoc. In the seven-day era that ended Tuesday, 58 Los Angeles County residents infected with coronavirus have died. That’s less than last fall’s winter peak of 164 in early January, but it’s still higher than last fall’s pause of 43 and last spring’s low of 24.
Cumulatively, nearly 36,000 other people infected with coronavirus have died in Los Angeles County. More than 101,000 COVID-19 deaths have been reported in California; Nationally, the death toll is 1. 1 million.
And while the number of deaths declined this winter, COVID-19 remains a leading cause of death. Nationally, 69,000 COVID-19 deaths have been reported since October, nearly quadrupling the estimated 18,000 flu deaths during the same period.
Those most at risk of dying remain the unvaccinated, adding to those who have become inflamed before. For the 30-day period ending Feb. 14, unvaccinated Angelenos were more than six times more likely to die from COVID-19 than those who were. They were vaccinated and gained an updated booster shot.
And long COVID is still a risk. A survey reported that about 1 in four adults nationwide who had COVID-19 face prolonged COVID symptoms lasting 3 months or longer. Most other people with long-term COVID are slowly improving, but some persist for years, resulting in disability, Ferrer said.
Los Angeles County has noted a steady and sustained decline in its census of pandemic-related hospitals in recent months. Since early December, while fitness systems were still grappling with the fallout from a short-lived fall peak, the number of coronavirus-positive patients dropped from more than 1,300 to just 400 on Wednesday.
That count, which includes other people hospitalized particularly for a COVID-related illness and those who tested positive after seeking care for some other reason, is the smallest single-day count since October. But it remains above the previous lows of spring 2021. and 2022, when hospitalizations fell to 212 and 209, respectively.
Although the emergency phase of the pandemic is coming to an end, officials warn that the danger is not yet over. One specific concern, Van Kerkhove said at a briefing Wednesday, “is the option for the virus to change, not just become even more transmissible. “
“We will continue to see waves of infection,” he said. It’s possible that the spikes in those infections aren’t as big as we’ve noticed before, and they probably aren’t because we have population-level immunity that’s higher globally through vaccination and also beyond infection. “
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Luke Money is a Metro reporter covering the latest news in the Los Angeles Times. He was a former reporter and local deputy editor for the Daily Pilot, a Times Community News publication in Orange County, and before that, he wrote for the Santa Clarita Valley Signal. He earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Arizona.
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Rong-Gong Lin II is a San Francisco-based Metro reporter who specializes in covering protection issues against statewide earthquakes and the COVID-19 pandemic. The Bay Area location graduated from UC Berkeley and the Los Angeles Times in 2004.
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