New COVID-19 Infections Continue to Fall on Thursday, But Death Toll Mounts

New COVID-19 cases in Pasadena continued to decline Thursday with 25 infections detected, but fatalities continued to mount with five additional deaths reported, authorities said.

As recently as a month ago, the city saw a weekly average of 198 new infections.

And while incidents of new infections have steadily dropped since, deaths associated with the recent surge have continued.

In all, Pasadena health officials have recorded 10,587 cases of COVID-19 and 292 deaths.

City health officials reported 22,992 Pasadenans have received their first vaccine dose, and another 5,527 have received both doses.

At Huntington Hospital, officials reported treating 99 COVID-19 patients on Thursday, with 18 of them being housed in intensive care units.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health announced 3,489 new cases of the virus and 160 new deaths on Thursday.

The figures raised the countywide totals to 1,158,619 infections and 18,658 fatalities.

Just over 3,770 patients were hospitalized with the virus across the county, representing “a reduction of more than 1,000 patients in a week,” the L.A. County Department of Public Health said in a written statement. Twenty-percent of those patients were being treated in ICUs.

L.A. County Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer commended recent progress in stemming the spread of the virus, but warned that it could be reversed with just a short period of inattention.

“L.A. County has made encouraging progress in all the key indicators this month. Let us not step backward on our recovery journey,” she said.

“We know from experience that gatherings, parties, and the other activities we usually do with non-household members on holidays lead to increases in transmission, hospitalizations, and deaths,” according to Ferrer. “Continuing to slow transmission requires limiting the number of people we interact with. If we do not gather, we save lives.”

State health officials announced 8,575 new COVID-19 infections and 461 deaths on Thursday, placing the overall totals since the start of the pandemic at 3,371,556 cases of the virus and 45,456 fatalities.

The average positivity rate over the prior week was recorded at 4.6%, according to the CDPH. The 14-day rate was 5.4%.

As of Thursday, L.A. County represented 34% of California’s total infections and 41% of the state’s fatalities.