“The R has been creeping up steadily now for the past 3 weeks,” said Dr. Christina Ghaly, the Director of the Department of Health Services for Los Angeles County on Monday. That rate is the calculated rate of Covid-19 transmission in the county.
County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer reported in a Zoom meeting with reporters that the estimated transmission number was 0.93 in early March, up from 0.87 the week before. The range of uncertainty is from .085 to 1.04. Any R number over 1 means that every person infected is passing the virus on to more than 1 other county resident. In a region of 10 million, infections can quickly snowball.
According to an L.A. County report issued Monday, the rate of decrease in patients at local hospitals has also begun slowing. The report says that, because of the range of uncertainty in the R number, it is currently unclear if “the number of hospitalizations will continue to decrease, remain stable, or increase.”
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'The Chi' Pauses Production After Positive Covid-19 TestWhile the R has been rising, Ghaly said that “the base on which the R acts is incredibly important. The lower base of cases that we’re operating on now is incredibly important.”
Indeed, officials reported just 516 new cases and nine additional fatalities on Monday, though those relatively low numbers may reflect reporting delays from the weekend. In any case, the daily totals are far, far below where they were even a month ago, meaning a rise in transmission would not have the same impact it once would have.
“I don’t think we’ll EVER get back to the disaster we saw in spring and early summer,” said the usually cautious Ferrer. “There are a large number of people [now] vaccinated. We’re nowhere near herd immunity,” she continued, “but there is a lot of protection. In our skilled nursing facilities, we will not see a surge like we saw in June.” Ferrer said the same goes for heath care workers, many of whom are now inoculated.
