25K COVID Deaths, 10K Reinfections: LA Marks Grim Milestones

LOS ANGELES, CA — Los Angeles County marked its 25,000 coronavirus death Thursday, a day when "nobody ought to be dying of COVID anymore," said Los Angeles County's public health director.

The county confirmed another 35 COVID-19 deaths on Thursday and another 3,239 infections. Although almost all of the coronavirus deaths remain among the unvaccinated in Los Angeles County, the number of vaccinated people sickened and hospitalized is climbing. Additionally, more than 10,000 people have now tested positive for the coronavirus twice over a span of three months or more, county health officials acknowledged. The drumbeat of troubling data reflect the toll the contagious Delta variant is having locally where millions remain vulnerable to the coronavirus.

"When you think that over 18 months we've lost 25,000 people, it's staggering and deeply upsetting," Barbara Ferrer, director of the county's health department said during an online briefing. "It (COVID-19) is one of the leading causes of death here in L.A. County. I think we lose more people ... to heart disease and associated illnesses related to heart disease, but I think unfortunately COVID is going to be right up there as one of the leading causes of death in L.A. County for this past year, and that's tragic.

"The message on that is almost nobody ought to be dying of COVID anymore, so let's get people vaccinated as quickly as possible," she said. "This does not need to be the leading cause of death."

Ferrer noted that by comparison, the flu causes between 1,000 and 1,900 deaths per year in the county.

Ferrer said she expects daily new case numbers to remain high in the coming weeks due to increased testing being required at many schools and businesses. She also noted that the county's cumulative case total will take a sharp rise on Friday, when health officials add more than 10,000 new cases to the overall pandemic total — representing people who received a repeat positive test more than 90 days after their original infection.

She said such repeat infections had not originally been tallied as part of the total.

Officials continue to keep a nervous eye on pediatric coronavirus cases, which are surging nationwide. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are nearly 2,000 children currently hospitalized with the coronavirus. Their hospitalization rates remain lower than adults, but they are climbing at rates higher than seen during the previous surges.

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health told Fox News, he's worried about the spike.

“And right now we have almost 2,000 kids in the hospital, many of them in ICU, some of them under the age of 4," he said.

The rise in pediatric coronavirus hospitalizations may reflect an overall spike in cases rather than an indication that the Delta variant is making youths sicker. The scientific community has not reached a consensus on the matter.

Still the surge in youth hospitalizations is worrisome health officials and families as hundreds of thousands of students return to in-person schooling. This week the Culver City Unified School District became the first to require proof of vaccination among students 12 and older.

Overall, hospitalizations among adults and children have been steadily rising for more than a month, but Ferrer noted Thursday that between April and mid-August, roughly 25% of the COVID-positive patients were actually hospitalized for a reason other than the coronavirus. Their infection was detected only during a routine admission screening.

While continuing to profess the effectiveness of vaccines, Ferrer noted that the percentages of fully vaccinated being infected and hospitalized have been rising over the past three months.

She said that in April, vaccinated people represented only 5% of the overall number of cases in the county. In July, that number increased to 30%. Vaccinated people represented only 5% of hospitalized patients in April, but 13% in July.

Overall, however, the percentages of vaccinated people who test positive, are hospitalized or die from COVID remain low -- all less than 1%. Of the nearly 5.15 million fully vaccinated residents as of Tuesday, 27,331 have tested positive, for a rate of 0.53%. Only 742 were hospitalized, for a rate of 0.014%, and 68 have died, a rate of 0.0013%.

"With these high rates of community transmission, more fully vaccinated people are getting post vaccination infection, however, this very same information also makes it clear how much protection fully vaccinated people have," Ferrer said. "Most of us that are fully vaccinated, we don't get infected. And if we do get infected, we don't end up hospitalized and they are very unlikely to tragically lose their life to COVID if fully vaccinated."

Recent case numbers appear to indicate that the increase in new infections seen over the past two months appears to be leveling off. But Ferrer warned that a leveling off is "just not good enough," particularly heading into the winter months.

"Yes, we're worried about the winter," she said. "We'd feel a lot better about the winter if our vaccination numbers all go way up, because at this point the vaccines are still doing exactly what we needed them to do, which is preventing people from getting seriously ill and dying."

Latest figures show that 73% of county residents aged 12 and over have received at least one dose of vaccine. Among the overall, 10.3 million residents of all ages in the county — including those too young to be eligible for the shots — 63% have received at least one dose and 55% are fully vaccinated.

City News Service, the Associated Press and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.