New COVID Infections Soar in Pasadena, But No Sign of Hospitalization Surge

Wednesday’s new COVID-19 infection count jumped 69% over the previous day’s to 138 new cases, the highest daily count recorded since January 12, while the number of COVID-positive patients at Huntington Hospital remained unchanged since Monday. No new COVID-related deaths were reported.

City spokesperson Lisa Derderian said that the Pasadena Public Health Dept. was checking the vaccination status of each new case. As of 4:30 p.m. Wednesday,  83 of the new cases were people who had already been vaccinated with at least one dose.

Derderian said the 7-day average of new cases jumped overnight from 42.4 cases per day to 59.9 cases per day.

Meanwhile, a Huntington Hospital spokesperson told Pasadena Now that the hospital has no plan to erect “surge tents” outside its Emergency Room as was done during earlier periods of rising COVID cases.

Dorey Huston also said there are no current plans to reduce or to ask patients to postpone elective surgeries to free up rooms and staff for an influx of COVID-positive patients.

Visits to see hospitalized patients also continue, for the most part, Huston said.

“Right now, we are allowing visitation for hospitalized patients. Due to the increase in COVID-19 cases, we are no longer permitting visitors in our [Emergency Department],” Huston said. “If you have a friend or family member you would like to visit in the hospital, please go to our website for a list of hours and requirements to safely enter our facility at www.huntingtonhospital.org/visitors.”

Huntington Hospital infectious disease expert Dr. Kimberly Shriner said it is unknown if the emerging Omicron variant is milder than the Delta variant which caused the last big surge of COVID-19 infections and deaths.

“It is certainly much, much more infectious and it’s occurring in a time when people’s guards are down, they’re traveling, they’re going to unmasked events, they’re going to holiday gatherings,” Shriner said in an interview on Monday.

“We don’t know for sure whether [Omicron is] going to cause disease that’s serious enough to require hospitalization. The reason is it’s brand new, it emerged probably in the early part of November. It emerged in a country that has a largely younger population than the United States. The mean age is around 40. And they’re also heavily experienced with viruses. They’ve had a lot of COVID natural infections.”

Shriner said as the Omicron variant begins to circulate widely it will likely infect people who are immunosuppressed patients with cancer or other diseases, the eldery, and people who have not yet gotten a booster.

“That’s when we may see more morbidity sickness and mortality death with Omicron — built on top of this big layer of Delta that we’re still dealing with,” Shriner said.