December COVID-19 Deaths in Pasadena Double Over November’s in New Month’s First 10 Days

COVID-19 infections stemming primarily from Thanksgiving gatherings accounted for the majority of the 85 new cases reported in Pasadena on Wednesday, along with one additional fatality, authorities said.

The most recent death was that of a woman in her early-90s who lived in a senior care facility, Pasadena city spokeswoman Lisa Derderian said.

According to city data, Pasadena recorded three COVID-19 fatalities in November. The city had seen six deaths in December as of Wednesday

The new figures reported Wednesday raised the city’s total cases to 4,414 and total deaths to 144, according to city data.

The majority of the new cases appeared to have resulted from Thanksgiving gatherings, Derderian said.

Pasadena saw an all-time high average of new daily cases over the previous week at 86.7, bolstered largely by three days of consecutive record numbers of infections Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Huntington Hospital reported treating a record-high number of 90 COVID-19 patients on Wednesday, with 15 of them being treated in intensive care units. The seven-day average of hospitalized COVID-19 patients reached a record level of 11.9.

The hospital intensive care unit capacity rate for the 11-county Southern California region had dropped to 9 percent, according to state health officials.

Under state protocols, counties must remain under the current stay-at-home order until capacity stabilizes above 15 percent.

Los Angeles County Department of Public Health officials urged the public to avoid all gatherings, wear masks and do all they can to stem the surge, warning that hospitals and healthcare workers were potentially on the verge of becoming overwhelmed.

The agency reported 9,243 new COVID-19 infections and 75 new deaths on Wednesday, bringing the county-wide totals to 475,571 cases of COVID-19 and 8,075 fatalities.

The county had not seen this many fatalities since late-July.

A record of 3,299 COVID-19 patients were hospitalized throughout L.A. County, with 23 percent of them — amounting to 758 people — being treated in intensive care units, the L.A. County Department of Public Health said in a written statement. 

“The number of daily hospitalizations has increased over 400 percent from November 1 when the daily number of people hospitalized was 791,” the statement said.

L.A. County’s overall positivity rate stood at 11 percent, officials said.

“From early November through November 29, the test positivity rate has increased 3-fold from around 3.5% to just over 9%. Today’s test positivity rate is 12.5%,” according to the county statement.

L.A. County Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer said it was “a most dangerous time for L.A.”

“I ask everyone to please be extremely careful and diligent in protecting yourself and other people. When there are tens of thousands of infected people out and about each day, there is a significant increase in the probability that among the many encounters each individual has during the day, one or more of these will be with a person infected with the virus,” she said.

“The safest thing you can do during this very difficult time in the pandemic is to stay home as much as possible and to interact only with members of your household,” Ferrer urged. 

“When we must leave our homes, we always wear face coverings at all times when we are with people we don’t live with and we need to keep a distance of at least six feet from other people as much as possible. Please use every tool we have to be as safe as possible,” she said.

California health officials reported a new single-day record number of new infections at 30,851, narrowly exceeding the record of 30,075 cases reported by the California Department of Public Health on Sunday. Officials also announced 196 new deaths.

In total, the state had seen 1,420,558 cases of the novel coronavirus and 20,243 fatalities, according to the CDPH.

The state’s average positivity rate over the prior week reached 10 percent, and the 14-day average was recorded at 8.8 percent, officials said.

As of Wednesday, L.A. County represented 33 percent of California’s total COVID-19 infections and 40 percent of the state’s fatalities.