LOS ANGELES, Aug 6 (NNN-AGENCIES) – California hit another grim milestone in the COVID-19 pandemic, as the most populous state in the United States, officially reached 10 million confirmed cases, according to data released by the state health authorities yesterday.
The Golden State, home to around 40 million residents, reported a total of 10,024,326 infections to date, along with 93,056 related deaths, the California Department of Public Health, said.
There are 4,435 people with COVID-19 currently hospitalised in the state, with 505 in intensive care units, said the department in yesterday’s update.
Around 79.9 percent of people in the state have been vaccinated with at least one COVID-19 dose, the update showed.
California, once an epicentre of the pandemic, became the first in the U.S. to surpass five million COVID-19 infections, last Dec.
Statewide transmission numbers in California had been on a consistent climb, from one of the lowest points of the pandemic in early Apr, until peaking in mid-Jul, at one of the highest case rates of the health crisis, reported The Sacramento Bee, the largest newspaper in the state.
The growth was fueled by subvariants of Omicron: BA.2 lineages at first, which dominated new cases throughout spring, followed by the BA.4 and BA.5 strains, which took over early this summer, said the report, adding, infection and hospital numbers have improved gradually.
With California suffering through another intense COVID-19 wave, the stunning proliferation of the BA.5 subvariant is becoming a growing focus of scientific scrutiny, with experts saying it may replicate itself far more effectively than earlier versions of Omicron.
If BA.5 retains its position as the main dominant variant, that could eventually stabilise the situation in California and eventually point to a situation where there will finally be a downturn in cases, Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious-diseases expert at the University of California, San Francisco, was quoted as saying, by the biggest newspaper on the U.S. West Coast.
People are “taking more risks; they move around; they travel,” Chin-Hong told the newspaper, adding that, “a number of people aren’t wearing masks at places where it was once ubiquitous, meaning there’s less peer pressure to wear a mask in areas where it was once commonplace.”
Public health officials in Los Angeles, the most populous county in the country, noted yesterday, that, the metropolitan area “remains at the high community level” and urged people to be fully vaccinated to increase protection against COVID-19.
Los Angeles County’s Public Health Director, Barbara Ferrer, noted earlier this week, “As we continue to see improvements in our metrics, we still must do all we can to protect those who are most vulnerable, including the elderly, immunocompromised, and our essential workers.”
The county, home to over 10 million residents, backed off last week, from reinstating an indoor mask mandate as infections and rates of hospitalisations stabilised.– NNN-AGENCIES
