Pasadena Marks 7th Straight Day Without a COVID-19 Death

For the seventh day in a row, no COVID-19 fatalities were reported in Pasadena on Wednesday, officials said.

Three new infections raised the city’s total to 11,139, while the local death toll stood at 335, according to Pasadena Public Health Department data.

Officials at Huntington Hospital reported 18 COVID-19 patients still being treated at the facility, with only one of them in an intensive care unit.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health on Wednesday reported another 40 COVID-19 deaths, lifting the cumulative countywide total to 23,143.

Another 648 cases were also reported, giving the county a cumulative total from throughout the pandemic of 1,219,562.

According to state figures, there were 652 people hospitalized in the county due to COVID-19, an increase from 638 on Tuesday. There were 166 people in intensive care units as of Wednesday, up from 158 Tuesday.

Los Angeles County, including Pasadena, reached the threshold to move into the “orange” tier under the state’s reopening guidelines on Tuesday, but health officials at both the county and city levels are holding off until Monday to lift “red” tier restrictions.

Despite the move to the orange tier, health officials continued to preach vigilance, warning that cases have been rising in other states and countries. They said the continued emergence of COVID-19 variants that can spread more easily from person to person could lead to another surge in cases.

L.A. County Director of Public Health Barabra Ferrer noted Wednesday that 30 U.S. states and territories are seeing increases in cases, and while she understands the desire of people to move beyond the pandemic, recent scenes of people flocking to beaches and Tuesday night’s celebration by UCLA students following the university’s NCAA tournament victory could lead to another surge.

“Clearly you know when you see overcrowding at beaches, you see events like we saw last night with students having huge parties and none of them really looked like they were wearing their masks, you created a lot of risk — risk for yourself, but unfortunately, risk for a lot of other people,” she said.

“So these … poor choices that people are making right now don’t bode well for anybody in this country, they don’t bode well for us here in L.A. County. They certainly don’t bode well for residents in the rest of the country where, you know, it seems to be more common for some folks to not realize how important it is at this point in time to continue to take protections that still will save lives.”

The California Department of Public Health reported 1,962 new cases of COVID-19 and 148 deaths on Wednesday, bringing the overall totals to 3,568,426 infections and 57,936 fatalities.

The statewide average positivity rate over the prior week increased slightly to 1.8%, up from 1.6% on Tuesday, according to CDPH data.

As of Wednesday, L.A. County represented 34% of California’s COVID-19 infections and 40% of the state’s deaths.