LA County on verge of indoor mask mandate as COVID-19 rates climb nationwide
The California county has now moved to a “medium” level of infections as cases are rising in 40 states, led by Oklahoma, where they are up 89% from two weeks earlier.
Reports of the end of the pandemic may have been premature. Los Angeles County officials have now moved into “medium” levels of COVID-19 inflections on Friday and are considering reinstating an indoor mask mandate, including shared office space and manufacturing settings, after COVID 19 cases spiked recently.
As of last week, the county was recording 2,710 cases a day, or 188 cases a week for every 100,000 residents. A case rate of 100 or more is considered high. The autumn low was a weekly rate of 60, set on October 21. Hospitalizations also are up dramatically. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 1,196 new admissions of coronavirus-positive patients for the week that ended last Tuesday, triple the rate from the beginning of November.
“These numbers clearly demonstrate that COVID is still with us,” Barbara Ferrer, Los Angeles County public health director, told the Los Angeles Times. “We feel like we’re seeing a much more rapid acceleration than we want to be seeing at this point.” LA County, the largest county in the US, will require face coverings if it reaches a “high” category, Ferrer said during a press conference on Thursday.
Southern California is not alone. COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in the United States are rising, and intensive-care-unit beds are being filled again in a trend that may spell an end to the stable period the country experienced during the fall months, Market Watch reported. The daily average of new cases last week was up 22% from two weeks earlier to 49,070. Cases are rising in 40 states, led by Oklahoma, where they are up 89% from two weeks earlier.
Experts are warning that new Omicron variants are on the rise. The most recent data from the CDC showed that these newer subvariants accounted for 62.8% of all cases in the US in the week through Dec. 3.
Related: 4 considerations for coordinating a safe return to the office
The daily average for hospitalizations was up 21% from two weeks ago to 33,708, although as always, the trend is not uniform across the nation. Louisiana has highest increase in hospitalizations, up 109% from two weeks ago, followed by California. ICU visits are up 17%, while test-positivity rates are up 29%, although the daily average for deaths is down 3% to 274.
Just how bad this winter’s COVID-19 wave will be remains uncertain. Just before Thanksgiving, Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s outgoing chief medical advisor for the pandemic, said a note of optimism emerged from Singapore. The city recently experienced a big wave in coronavirus cases fueled by the Omicron subvariant XBB but did not see a resulting major increase in hospitalizations.
As the situation develops, advisors can provide guidance to clients who are grappling with ongoing related health and financial issues, including insurance battles over long COVID treatments and disability claims. Experts say the long-term effects aren’t yet known.
“It’s a work in progress,” Michel Leonard, chief economist and data scientist at the Insurance Information Institute, told MSN. “There’s not enough statistical data at this point.”
Faced with a staggering loss of life, insurance firms saw payouts soar during the pandemic. U.S. life insurers paid more than $90 billion to beneficiaries in 2020, a 15.4% increase in payments compared to 2019. It was the largest year-over-year jump since the 1918 influenza epidemic, according to data from the American Council of Life Insurers.