LA is investigating whether super-infectious COVID strain from UK is behind surge in cases

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Public health officials in California are investigating whether the super-infectious COVID-19 strain from the United Kingdom is behind a surge in cases there with hospitals statewide overrun with coronavirus patients.

A terrifying graph by 91-DIVOC shows how daily cases are surging far beyond any other state with the seven day average of positive tests at around the 40,000 mark. The next state, Texas, is at 11,990 as of Sunday. 

The situation is so dire that the top public health official in LA, the country’s most populous county, said that on average one COVID-19 patient is dying every 10 minutes and hospital staff are being forced to place gurneys into gift shops.

Health inspectors and authorities stepped up enforcement at restaurants and shopping malls over the post-Christmas weekend as they desperately seek to curb a coronavirus surge that already has filled some hospitals in California well beyond normal capacity.

L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer told The LA Times tests are being carried out to see if the new mutant strain – which may spread up to 70 per cent more easily than other strains of the virus – is there. 

She said: ‘I think everyone at this point that’s seeing these kinds of surges is obviously looking to see, “Do we have that particular variant?” When I spoke with the state Department of Public Health, they indicated that they’ve been looking and didn’t think they had seen [it]. But you know, you have to know what you’re looking for.’

When population is taken into account California’s case rate, 100.5 average new confirmed per 100,000 people a day over the past seven days, is surpassed only by Tennessee at 119.7. 

One out of every 1,000 Americans has now died of COVID-19 with December set to be the deadliest month since the pandemic began with 63,000 Americans dead because of the virus; November saw 36,964 deaths. 

On Christmas Eve, California became the first state in the nation to exceed 2 million confirmed COVID-19 cases. 

The latest data indicated on Sunday that the COVID-19 death toll in the United States reached 331,929 people.

The grim milestone coincides with figures from the Census Bureau which found that as of the last week of December, the total population of the US stood at around 330,750,000.

Dr. Peter Hotez, an infectious disease specialist at the Baylor College of Medicine, told CNN January’s projections are ‘nightmarish’. 

As of Saturday evening, more than 1.9 million Americans have been administered a vaccine for COVID-19. 

Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a cardiologist at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, said he is worried about Americans being hesitant to get vaccinated against COVID-19.  

The US government said Thursday it will now require all airline passengers arriving from the UK to test negative for COVID-19 starting Monday. The  new mutant strain is spreading in Britain, prompting many countries to shut their borders to travelers from there.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a statement Thursday that all airline passengers arriving from the UK must test negative within 72 hours of departure. 

L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti said of the rise in cases: ‘This [the case surge] happened devastatingly quickly. Everybody I talked to said this acceleration was beyond any model and any expectation, so then people say ‘What broke down?’ and I’ve got to think it’s partly the strain that was out there.’ 

Crowding at Los Angeles County shopping malls came under scrutiny before the holiday.

Several of them were cited and fined up to $500 for violating COVID-19 measures, which could include not keeping occupancy below 20 per cent capacity and not prohibiting eating and drinking, the Los Angeles Times reported on Saturday.

‘We’re going to take a hard look this weekend at the shopping malls because the pictures we’ve been seeing are … another little mini-disaster,’ county public health director Barbara Ferrer said.

‘The occupancy is supposed to be down to 20 per cent. But when you look around, they look way more crowded than 20 per cent.

‘And that just means a complete breakdown of what we are requiring.’ 

Health officials were waiting to see whether people followed their pleas and avoided Christmas and New Year’s festivities that could lead to a new round of infections and threaten to extend stay-at-home orders in several regions of the state.

They repeated warnings before the holiday week that Thanksgiving gatherings where people didn’t wear masks or observe social distancing have resulted in a surge.

Beverly Hills police halted a plan for a secret New Year’s Eve dinner at La Scala after the Italian restaurant circulated invitations to a ‘discreet’ meal that would violate the county’s ban on indoor dining.

In Sonoma County in California’s wine country, a Native American casino announced it was canceling a planned private New Year’s Eve indoor event that could have drawn as many as 4,000 people.

The Graton Resort and Casino is on sovereign native land that isn’t subject to state or county health orders, but it had come under scrutiny for the event.

Coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths have mounted exponentially in recent weeks and are breaking new records.

Ferrer said on Thursday that ‘a person now dies every 10 minutes in LA County from COVID-19 – and since many of these deaths are preventable, our collective focus should be on doing right to save lives.

‘I hope we can each find the strength and courage to take responsibility for each other’s well-being.’

On Saturday, the state reported more than 30,000 new COVID-19 cases as of Thursday, a 22 per cent decrease from the previous day.

Officials said the change was due to a glitch keeping the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health from reporting its daily cases and deaths.

There were 36 new deaths reported.

The first coronavirus case in California was confirmed on January 25.

It took 292 days to get to 1 million infections on November 11. Just 44 days later, the number topped 2 million.

The crisis is straining the state’s medical system well beyond its normal capacity, prompting hospitals to treat patients in tents, offices and auditoriums. 

As of Saturday, California had record numbers of COVID-19 patients in the hospital and in ICUs, at nearly 19,000 and more than 4,000, respectively.

The figures showed no increase in hospitalizations, and there were a few more ICU beds available, for a total of around 1,390 statewide, according to the California Department of Public Health.

However, ICU capacity varied between the five regions of the state. 

The Northern California region had 34 per cent of ICU capacity while the Southern California and San Joaquin Valley regions were technically at 0 per cent capacity, meaning that they had no more regular ICU beds available.

Hard-hit hospitals were resorting to surge capacity by putting patients in areas not originally designated for the same level of care, such as post-operative recovery rooms. 

Hospitals have also hired extra staff and canceled elective surgeries – all to boost capacity before the cases contracted over Christmas and New Year’s show up in the next few weeks.

‘Everything is backed up all the way to the street,’ Dr. Oscar Casillas, the medical director of the emergency department at Martin Luther King Jr Community Hospital in South Los Angeles, told The New York Times.

During normal times, the hospital is set up to serve about 30 people at a time, most of them low income Latinos.

Over the last week, however, the hospital has been inundated with more than 100 patients per day.

This has forced hospital staff to utilize all available space, including the lobby and the gift shop, where gurneys holding patients are stashed.

The hospital waiting room is now a special tent that was erected outside to handle the overflow. 

‘Every day is scary,’ Lisa Thompson, an intensive care nurse at Providence St. Mary Medical Center in Apple Valley, told the Times.

‘We’re all stressed before we even come to work. Tons and tons of patients. We can’t even keep up with the amount of patients coming into the hospital.’

In a span of 10 months, California has become the viral epicenter of the nation.

‘In the beginning, especially, you saw all these pictures and videos from New York and you think, “Oh my God, it can never get that bad here”,’ said Mendy Hickey, the quality director at St. Mary’s. 

‘And while we have all the supplies we need, it is that bad here and we have no staff to take care of patients.’ 

Dr. Fauci warns Americans the ‘worst is yet to come’ with a post-Christmas surge in COVID cases after more than 85 million traveled for the holidays and says Trump should get vaccinated 

Dr. Anthony Fauci issued a warning to the American people that he believes the worst of the coronavirus pandemic is yet to come as the US is likely to suffer the effects of a holiday season travel boom. 

In appearance on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Fauci, a member of Trump’s coronavirus task force, was asked by host Dana Bash whether he agrees with President-elect Joe Biden that the darkest days of the pandemic lie ahead.

Citing 200,000 new cases of COVID-19 being reported each day, and with 2000 Americans dying of the virus daily, Fauci insisted: ‘We are at a really critical point.’

‘We very well might see a post-seasonal [surge] in the sense of Christmas/New Year’s,’ he said. ‘I’ve described it as a surge upon a surge because if you look at the slope, the incline of cases as we have experienced as we have gone into the late fall and soon to be early winter, it is really quite troubling.’

He continued: ‘If you put more pressure on the system by what might be a post-seasonal surge because of the traveling and the likely congregating of people for the good warm purposes of being together for the holidays, it’s very tough for people to not do that. And, yet, even though we advise not to, it’s going to happen.

‘So I share the concern of President-Elect Biden that as we get into the next few weeks, it might actually get worse.’

As many as 85 million Americans are thought to have traveled to celebrate the holiday season with their loved ones. 

While the vast majority were believed to have traveled by car, as many as 1.1 million people were screened at airports across the country on December 26 alone. 

The weekend before Christmas, between December 18 and December 21, 3.2 million people were reported to have traveled – breaking the record for the biggest weekend of air travel since the pandemic began. 

While Fauci said there is no guarantee that a post-festive period surge of the virus will happen, he said ‘certainly there is a danger of that’.

‘When you travel, you see pictures on the TV screens, Dana, of people at airports crowding in lines, trying to stay physically separated but it’s so difficult to do that. And that, generally, is followed when people get to the destination they want to be, that you’re going to have mixing of household people at a dinner or at a social function.

‘Those are the things that naturally happen and as much as we advise against it, nonetheless it happens. And that is one of the reasons why we are concerned about that being a real risk situation for the spread of the infection.’

Data released by Johns Hopkins University indicated on Saturday revealed that one out of every 1,000 Americans has died of coronavirus, with the country’s death toll now at 331,116.

Facui’s remarks came shortly after he was asked by Bash as to whether he suffered any side effects when he received his first shot of the Moderna vaccine on Tuesday.

‘The only thing I had was about maybe six to ten hours following the vaccine, I felt a little bit of an ache in my arm. That lasted maybe 24 hours, a little bit more,’ Fauci said.

‘Then it went away and completely other than that, I felt no other deleterious type of effects. It was better than an influenza vaccine.’

Fauci, President-elect Joe Biden, Vice President Mike Pence and a number of other high profile government figures have already received either the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine. President Trump, however, has so far not.

Dr. Fauci insisted that he would recommend Trump get vaccinated as soon as possible, though said the decision ultimately lies with the president and his physician.

‘My recommendation – I’ve said this before — I would get him vaccinated, Fauci said. ‘He is still the president of the United States. A critical person. 

‘I recommended that vice president pence get vaccinated and he did. I was there with him when he will got vaccinated. 

‘So my recommendation for the president remains the same but the final decision, obviously, is up to him,’ Fauci said.  

He went on to predict that with the distribution of both Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines in the upcoming months, US health experts should see the general population reach significant herd immunity by the end of next summer.

Earlier this week, Fauci said he believes that for the US to successfully achieve herd immunity, as many as 90 percent of the population may need to be vaccinated.

So far around 1.9 million Americans have received the first does of a vaccine since December 4, which is less than one percent of the population.

He acknowledged that he had incrementally increased his estimates from earlier in the year, when he tended to say only 60% to 70% would need to be inoculated for herd immunity to be reached.

Pressed on the issue on Sunday, Bash asked Fauci why he wasn’t ‘straight’ with the American people from the outset, rather than moving the goal posts this late into the pandemic.

‘No, actually, Dana, I don’t think it will be interpreted as being straight or not. We have to realize that we have to be humble and realize what we don’t know,’ Fauci responded.

‘These are pure estimates and the calculations that I made 70%, 75%, it’s a range. The range is going to be somewhere between 70% and 85%.

‘The reason I started saying 70%, 75% I brought it up to 85. That is really not leap. It was based on calculation and extrapolation from measles.’

Fauci continued by reiterating ‘we need to be humble and [admit] nobody knows for sure.’

‘I think 70% to 75% for herd immunity for COVID-19 is a reasonable estimate. In fact, most of my epidemiology colleagues agree with me.’

The infectious disease expert said he believes most Americans should have access to the vaccine by late March or early April, with as much as 85 percent of the population vaccinated by the ‘middle to the end of Summer’.

‘I hope by the time we get to the fall, we will reach that critical percentage of people that we can really start thinking about and return to some form of normality,’ he said. 

He also addressed a mutation of the coronavirus has been identified in the United Kingdom and South Africa, insisting he is ‘looking at it intensively now’.

While the new strand of the virus is said to be considerably more transmissible, Fauci insisted there’s no evidence to suggest that it’s anymore deadly

‘Obviously, this is something we always take seriously and concerning whenever you get a mutation, but I think the American public needs to remember and realize that these are viruses and continually mutating all the time.’

Fauci also assured that scientists in the UK believe the new strand of the virus is still susceptible to the vaccine.

‘Having said that, you take something like this very seriously, you follow it very carefully, and you make whatever adjustments you need to do based on data as it evolves,’ he said.

In response to the discovery of the new strand, the US is now requiring all passengers arriving from the UK to provide a negative coronavirus test within 72 hours of departure.

The motion, announced late Thursday, came after increasing pressure from lawmakers such as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to enact such a policy.

When asked by Bash whether he believed it was a mistake to not implement the policy earlier, Fauci said, ‘I’m not going to say whether it was a mistake or not.’

‘Obviously, I think the move to put some form of restriction on travel and restriction could either be blocking out travel completely, which the decision was made not to do that, but I think it’s prudent and a good idea to do some form of testing and not let somebody on the plane from the UK, unless they have a documented negative COVID-19 test.

‘So I agree with that. I mean, you could argue about the timing, whether it should have been done a few days before.’