Official: Tuesday’s COVID-19 Count, Inflated by a Reporting Backlog, Remains at ‘High Level of Cases’

Health officials in Pasadena reported 113 new COVID-19 infections Tuesday, which included some cases that had been backlogged from the day before, but no additional fatalities.

Although Tuesday’s count was inflated by the backlog, “we are still at a high level of cases,” city spokeswoman Lisa Derderian said.

“We feel we are past the Thanksgiving exposure for the preponderance of cases and this reflects additional transmission post-Thanksgiving,” she said.

“This means a number of things, including people met with people outside their households then took it back to their workplaces, other households and other activities,” according to Derderian.

In total, Pasadena has recorded 4,935 COVID-19 infections and 139 deaths since March.

Statistics on hospitalizations at Huntington Hospital were not available Tuesday.

The intensive care unit capacity for the 11-county Southern California region, including L.A. County, continued to plummet, dropping to 1.7 percent, according to the California Department of Public Health.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health reported 11,194 new infections and 86 additional deaths, bringing the county’s overall totals to 543,769 cases of the virus and 8,431 deaths.

The number of patients hospitalized throughout the county had increased four times over the previous month to 4,403, with 21 percent of them being treated in intensive care units.

L.A. County Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer urged continued patience until vaccines become widely distributed in the coming months.

“We must all work together to prevent as many hospitalizations and deaths as possible while we wait for the COVID-19 vaccine to be widely available,” Ferrer said. “The first vaccines were administered yesterday marking the beginning of the end of this pandemic. I ask that everyone stay strong and focus all efforts to stop the surge.

“We need to protect each other from this deadly virus by carefully abiding by the straight-forward safety measures and directives in the Health Officer Order. It worked before and it will work again when we all follow the rules,” Ferrer said.

At the state level, public health officials announced 32,326 new infections and 142 new deaths on Tuesday, raising the statewide totals to 1,617,370 cases of COVID-19 and 21,188 fatalities.

The statewide average positivity rate over the prior two weeks reached an all-time high of 10.6 percent, according to the CDPH. The 7-day rate had climbed to 11.1 percent.

As of Tuesday, L.A. County accounted for 34 percent of California’s COVID-19 infections and 40 percent of the state’s deaths.