L.A. County public health officials, using a phrase that's become common for them since the start of this pandemis, said today that they are "cautiously optimistic" about current hospitalization trends.
“After a fairly rough July, we are cautiously optimistic about what our numbers are showing in the first week of August, particularly the information on declining daily hospitalizations," said Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer in a statement
Authorities noted that they have confidence in the hospitalization numbers which recorded at the local level. They are less confident in some of the other numbers, cautioning that they are still awaiting a backlog of cases from the state to clear up in coming days.
With that caveat, they reported:
In all, 1,610 COVID-19 patients are currently hospitalized, about a third of them in ICU beds, according to county officials.
So far, the county has test results for some 1.9 million residents and 10% of those people have tested positive.
Still, a significant backlog in COVID-19 tests — as much as 300,000 tests in all — remain unreported by the state due to technical issues with California's tracking database.
Ferrer told us late last week that with so many test results missing, county officials do not have a clear picture of the pandemic's spread. State officials say they have identified and fixed issues with the CalREDIE system. But the missing tests still need to be processed, and the data shared with counties.
Ferrer said counties depend on that information:
"So that we can do those interviews with people who are positive and find out who their close contacts are so that both groups of people can be told that they need to stay inside, away from other people."
OVERALL LOOK AT LA COUNTY NUMBERS:
Here's a look at longer-term trends in the county. To see more, visit our California COVID-19 Tracker and choose L.A. County or any other California county that interests you. These numbers are current as of Friday, Aug. 7:
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