LA's Coronavirus Death Toll Climbs As SoCal Eases Restrictions

LOS ANGELES, CA — Capping a week where coronavirus deaths in Los Angeles County doubled, neighboring counties began loosening restrictions, leading to scenes of crowded beaches and provoking backlash from state officials and on social media.

Bordering Los Angeles County’s vacant closed beaches, the images provided a stark visual contrast, and they may reflect a divide in the approach to battling the pandemic. Enduring the brunt of the state’s outbreak Los Angeles health officials have maintained strict closures while pleading with residents to protect one another by respecting social distancing guidelines. On Monday, the county reported 900 more cases and 29 additional deaths, driving the total number of confirmed cases passed 20,000 and bringing the death toll close to 1,000.

At the same time, Orange and Ventura counties haven’t been hit with severe outbreaks, and officials there opted to open many beaches and parks as some residents have become more vocal about wanting to go out. But beachgoers in Orange and Ventura county included residents from Los Angeles County, where studies show that hundreds of thousands of people have been infected with COVID-19 without ever realizing it.

'This virus doesn't take the weekends off.'

The packed beaches provoked the governor, who lashed out Monday.

"Those images are an example of what not to see, ... what not to do if we're going to make the meaningful progress that we've made in the last few weeks extend into the next number of weeks," Newsom said. "The reality is we are just a few weeks away, not months away, from making measurable and meaningful changes to our stay-at-home order.

"That is a very optimistic point to emphasize, however, that's driven by data. That's driven by behavior. And as we change our behavior we can impact the science, the health and the data. This virus doesn't take the weekends off. This virus doesn't go home because it's a beautiful sunny day around our coasts."

Television news images over the weekend showed crowds of people on the sand, and while many appeared to be trying to position themselves away from other beach-goers, others appeared to disregard such safeguards.

Newsom was visibly frustrated over the images as he discussed them in his daily coronavirus briefing from Sacramento, insisting the state has been making progress on "flattening the curve" of COVID-19 infections, but a departure from health orders will endanger that effort.

"We have to manage risk," he said. "We have to manage and augment our behavior. And that's why I cannot impress upon you more to those Californians watching that we can't see the images like we saw, particularly on Saturday, in Newport Beach and elsewhere in the state of California."
Newport Beach officials, recognizing the situation, will vote on Tuesday whether to close the city's beaches for the next three weekends.

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In a statement issued over the weekend, the city noted, "While most of the beachgoers were practicing responsible social distancing, the volume of visitors generated significant neighborhood impacts and ran counter (to) guidance from California State Parks to `stay close to home when you get outdoors. This is not the time for a road trip to a destination park or beach."'
The governor said he respects local decision-making -- and the political pressure being placed on local elected officials -- but he said social-distancing has to remain in force.

"I cannot impress upon people more: The only thing that will set us back is our behavior," he said. "The only thing that will set us back is people stopping to practice physical distancing and appropriate social distancing. That's the only thing that's gonna slow down our ability to reopen this economy, our ability to adapt and modify the stay-at-home order. As iIsaid, weeks -- not months -- if the data continues to be as stable as it has been over the course of the last few weeks. The only thing that can stop that is more images like we saw over this weekend."

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Orange County CEO Frank Kim said he took a drive along the coast this weekend and noticed the large crowds, but he said he believes the problem will resolve itself as beaches are reopened in San Diego and elsewhere.

"What I heard was San Diego will open its beaches so that will be a benefit to us, since we won't see people coming up to Orange County from San Diego," Kim said. "I don't want to punish Orange County residents, keeping them away from the outdoors to recreate... I think the density will lessen as more beaches open."

Outbreaks Slams LA Nursing Homes, Homeless And Health Care Workers

With some fatigued residents becoming more lax about social distancing, health officials continue to face serious challenges in protecting the most vulnerable populations from the disease.
Roughly 45% of the fatalities have occurred in institutional settings, primarily skilled nursing homes, according to the county.

The county on Monday instituted a revised testing program at nursing homes, testing all residents and staff regardless of whether they show any symptoms. Testing had previously been reserved only for people showing symptoms of COVID-19, a move that county officials now concede may have fueled the spread of the virus.

"Early on in this pandemic, we were all unaware that COVID-19 could be spread by people who were infected but did not have any symptoms, and this unfortunately has resulted in the spread of the virus even where everybody has been doing their very best to implement infection-control measures with the information that we had at the time," Barbara Ferrer, director of the county Department of Public Health said. "So I apologize on behalf of all of us for not knowing enough at the start of this epidemic to take additional steps in our congregate living facilities to make sure we were doing everything possible to protect residents and staff."

As of Monday, at least one COVID-19 case has been reported at 312 institutional settings in the county -- including nursing homes, skilled nursing facilities, assisted living facilities, shelters, jails and prisons, Ferrer said. There have been 423 deaths in such settings, the vast majority of them at skilled nursing facilities, she said.

The continuing increases in cases and deaths in nursing homes prompted the county's health officer Friday to issue a revised order applicable to all licensed "congregate health care," or long-term care, facilities.

The order bars non-essential visitors to such facilities, allowing only essential workers to enter.
"It suspends all communal dining and activities ... to make sure that there's ample distancing among the residents who reside there," Ferrer said. "Staff will be required to always wear surgical masks and to use personal protective equipment when it's appropriate. And residents will also need to wear surgical masks or cloth face coverings when they're outside of their personal room."
Nursing homes aren’t the only communities disproportionately hit hard by the virus.

There have been 118 homeless people infected. The county has been dealing with an outbreak at the Union Rescue Mission on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, where more than 50 people have tested positive.

Ferrer said there have been 1,968 cases among health care workers in Los Angeles County, an increase of 527 since last week. Eleven health care workers have died in the county -- all between March 28 and April 21 -- with the majority occurring among staff at nursing facilities. Nurses account for 43% of all of the COVID-19 cases among health care workers.

Ferrer again lamented the elevated mortality rate from COVID-19 among certain ethnic groups, most notably the black community. Of the 942 people who have died from the illness, race/ethnic data was available Monday for 865 of them, with 37% of them Latinx, 28% whie, 18% Asian, 14% black and 1% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.

When compared to the overall population, the numbers show that in the black community, the mortality rate from the coronavirus is 13.2 for every 100,000 residents. The rate is 9.8 per 100,000 residents among the Latinx community, 7.9 among Asians and 5.7 among white residents.
She also said communities with high rates of poverty had three times the rate of deaths for COVID-19, at 16.9 deaths per 100,000 people.

"This data is deeply disturbing and it speaks to the need for immediate action in communities with disproportionately high rates of death," Ferrer said.

She said such actions include increased testing and providing better access to health care resources.

Ferrer said the county is putting online an interactive "dashboard" that includes data about testing, cases and deaths by city/community. She said it is being provided in hopes of giving people "a deeper understanding of how COVID-19 is affecting L.A. County."

City News Service And Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.