The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health on Tuesday confirmed 4,015 new cases of COVID-19, the region’s highest number of new cases reported since the pandemic began. The high number of cases is due, in part, to a backlog of about 2,000 test results received from one lab that just submitted lab results from July 2-5 today.
Testing results are available for more than 1.2 million individuals with 9% of those people testing positive. The daily positivity rate of all tests — a composite of a seven-day rolling average — has risen to 11.6%. On Monday, that seven-day average was pegged at 10%.
There are 1,969 people currently hospitalized — with 27% of those confirmed cases in the ICU and 18% are on ventilators. This remains substantially higher than the 1,350-1,450 daily hospitalizations seen three weeks ago. The number of daily of hospitalizations has steadily increased to more than 1,900 since July 1.
Just hours earlier, Orange County Health Care Agency officials reported 1,028 new coronavirus cases, the most ever in the county, but some infections reported were a result of a backlog from the state.
Also on Tuesday, the state reported it had identified 6,090 new cases in the past 24 hours. That number is second only to the all-time high of 7,149 reported on June 24. The past several weekends have seen totals above 8,000, but these results likely are attributable to delayed testing being released.
State tracking data indicated that more than a third of the region’s total COVID cases have been identified in the past 14 days. California has seen 94,701 new cases since June 23. The total number of positive coronavirus tests in the state is now 277,774, meaning the increase over this two-week period is 34%.
