COVID Hospitalizations, Including Pediatric Cases, Surge In LA

LOS ANGELES, CA — Coronavirus hospitalizations spiked, again, in Los Angeles County Tuesday to well above 2,000 COVID-positive patients. Pediatric hospitalizations are also spiking — nearly trippling in December. Though the caseload is overwhelming hospitals in the region, there is a crucial yet promising difference from past surges this time around.

About two-thirds of the COVID-positive patients at the four county-operated hospitals were admitted for something other than COVID, said Dr. Christina Ghaly, the county's health services director.

They only realized they had the coronavirus because they were tested when admitted to the hospital. This is a dramatic shift from last winter's surge when more than 80% of COVID-19 patients were hospitalized with severe COVID symptoms, Ghaly told the Los Angeles Times. Health officials see it as a sign that the coronavirus vaccines are effective in protecting people from severe symptoms.

“The difference we are seeing this year is largely due to the fact that we have a higher number of individuals who have been vaccinated and boosted,” department officials wrote in a statement to The Times. “With the Omicron variant being highly transmissible, we can’t emphasize enough the importance of having everyone get vaccinated and boosted as soon as they are eligible.”

Still, the sheer volume of cases is overwhelming hospitals, many of which are shortstaffed two years into the pandemic. More than 100,000 new cases were reported in Los Angeles County from Friday to Thursday, an unprecedented number likely to send hospitalization soaring in the coming days.

According to state figures, there were 2,240 COVID-positive patients in county hospitals as of Tuesday, a jump from 1,994 on Monday. Of those patients, 303 were being treated in intensive care, an increase from 278 a day earlier.

The hospitalization number is the highest it has been since last February in the midst of another winter COVID surge. Due to rising patient numbers, the county Department of Public Health on Monday urged residents to avoid visiting hospital emergency rooms unless they urgently need emergency care.

"Residents should not be visiting the emergency department solely to get a COVID test or for minor complaints that could be resolved through their primary care physician," according to the county.

The rising patient numbers have led to concerns about the stability of the hospital system, with authorities saying staffing issues will limit hospitals' ability to rapidly expand patient capacity they way they did last winter, when COVID-positive patient numbers topped 8,000.

County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer insisted Tuesday that people being treated for COVID in intensive care units are overwhelmingly unvaccinated. She against said statistics show that even though vaccinated people can become infected, they are far less likely to become seriously ill. According to the county, for the week of Dec. 15-28, unvaccinated people were 21 times more likely to wind up in an ICU than vaccinated people.

"Even as transmission surges, we are seeing that vaccines are doing what they were intended to do, which is protect people from getting severely ill due to COVID," Ferrer said in a statement. "We are grateful to the 80% of eligible residents who have already received at least one dose of vaccine -- and we hope that the almost 2 million people who have yet to be vaccinated take time to talk with their health care provider to receive additional information about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines.

"Choosing not to take the vaccine during this explosive winter surge is very risky since so many of those ill with COVID in the intensive care units at hospitals are unvaccinated, and tragically, some of these individuals will not survive," she said.

The county Department of Public Health reported Monday that the number of pediatric COVID patients in hospitals -- while still relatively small -- increased by nearly 190% from Dec. 4-25, with children under 4 seeing the biggest pediatric increase.

Although current figures were not immediately available, county officials told City News Service last week that on Dec. 2, there were eight pediatric patients hospitalized with COVID in the county, but that number jumped to 21 on Dec. 23.

The county issued revised guidelines late last week for schools, requiring teachers and staff to wear upgraded surgical-grade masks, while also requiring mask-wearing outdoors for students when physical distancing isn't possible. Dozens of school districts resumed in-person classes Monday, while the Los Angeles Unified School District will return next week.

The LAUSD is requiring all students and staff to be tested before in- person classes resume Jan. 11.

The county indicated it will be helping to distribute at-home test kits to students being made available by the state. Gov. Gavin Newsom previously said 6 million at-home kits would be distributed to every student in the state, but delivery of those kits has been slower than originally planned, with some districts still not receiving any of them.

With the highly transmissible Omicron variant of COVID-19 fueling spread of the virus, the county's case numbers have been skyrocketing over the past week. The county reported nearly 45,000 new cases over the weekend, following a daily record high of 27,091 new infections on Friday.

The county on Tuesday reported 24 more COVID deaths, bringing the overall death toll to 27,671. Another 21,790 cases were also confirmed, giving the county a cumulative total from throughout the pandemic of 1,780,154.

The rolling seven-day average daily rate of people testing positive for the virus was 22.5% as of Monday. That rate was below 1% in November.

Health officials continued to urge residents to curtail higher-risk activities, including indoor activities where individuals are unmasked for long periods of time, as well as crowded outdoor events.

"The days ahead will be extraordinarily challenging for all of us as we face extraordinarily high case numbers reflecting widespread transmission of the virus. In order to make sure that people are able to work and attend school, we all need to act responsibly," Ferrer said late last week.

She also noted that overall, COVID death rates have remained relatively flat in the county, despite the dramatic surge in infections, but she said that could change.

"Deaths, fortunately, remain low and they haven't changed, but this is because we're only about a week out from when our hospitalizations started rising," she said.

Officials have said about 90% of the COVID deaths during the pandemic occurred in people who had underlying health conditions. The most common conditions are hypertension, diabetes and heart disease. Of the 24 deaths reported on Tuesday, 20 had underlying health conditions.

City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on the Los Angeles Patch