COVID-19 Infections in Pasadena Increase Following Holiday Weekend

After steadily declining for several straight days, new COVID-19 infections detected in Pasadena increased on Wednesday, which health officials suspected was linked to the recent President’s Day weekend.

Thirty-two new infections and three additional deaths were added to the city’s tallies, city spokeswoman Lisa Derderian said.

Although still well below the scores of infections seen weeks ago, Wednesday’s case count was the highest since Feb. 8 and came on the heels of eight straight days of decline, according to city data.

The three new fatalities recorded on Wednesday were all women who had lived in the same long-term care facility, Derderian said. Their deaths took place “some time ago,” Derderian said, but were only just added to the city’s data.

Since the onset of the pandemic, the Pasadena Public Health Department has documented a total of 10,711 COVID-19 infections and 299 deaths.

Over the prior week, Pasadena had seen an average of 21.3 daily infections, which was the lowest weekly rate in more than three months.

Officials at Huntington Hospital reported a continuing decline in COVID-19 admissions, with 81 patients being treated on Wednesday. Sixteen of them were being housed in intensive care units.

According to city data, more than 24,300 Pasadenans had received their first doses of COVID-19 vaccine, while more than 7,300 had received both doses.

Overall, Los Angeles County’s COVID-19 situation continues to improve, with average daily case numbers down 85% from early January, average hospitalizations down 61%, and average daily deaths down 91%.

“The decreases that we see are meaningful and they’re all good news, but the numbers still remain higher than the numbers we saw back in autumn,” L.A. County Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer said. “These numbers continuing to decrease is not a given. This will only continue if we’re all in the game and we’re all continuing to use the tools we have at hand.”

The county reported another 162 COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday, raising the overall death toll in the county to 19,368.

Another 2,394 cases were confirmed, lifting the cumulative total from throughout the pandemic to 1,171,664.

At the state level, public health officials reported 4,090 new infections and 400 additional deaths on Wednesday, raising the statewide totals to 3,416,147 cases of COVID-19 and 47,507 related fatalities.

The state’s average positivity rate over the prior week declined to 3.3%, and the 14-day average reached the lowest rate recorded since nov. 12 at 4.1%, according to California Department of Public Health data.

As of Wednesday, L.A. County represented 34% of California’s COVID-19 infections and 41% of the state’s total deaths.

City News Service contributed to this report.