Los Angeles County workplaces are being hit hard by the new wave of coronavirus, and the number of reported clusters of cases nearly quadrupled since the beginning of May.
The sharp increase is the latest development in corporate shutdown efforts to get workers back to anything that looks like a pre-pandemic timeline.
Among the areas that should be noted groups of infection: airports, food processing companies, aerospace, and Hollywood film and television production. This comes as hospitalizations and deaths increase in Los Angeles County due to the spread of ultra-infectious subvariants.
Office attendance and rental patterns have changed over the past two years depending on the level of COVID-19 risk, real estate industry observers report. the office.
Given the number of clusters of cases in the workplace, county health officials proposed that employers take action for overcrowding and, if an outbreak is suspected, expand remote work options.
Across the county, 371 workplaces reported clusters of coronavirus cases in the week through Tuesday. At the beginning of May, the number 100.
A group is explained as 3 or more instances of coronavirus over a 14-day period. Workplaces must report groups to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. A group does not necessarily mean that the transmission occurred in the workplace; workers would possibly have become inflamed elsewhere.
Los Angeles County officials say that if there are more than three hundred workplaces reporting groups in a week, that’s very concerning.
“Clusters and outbreaks are disruptive and dangerous, especially since many other outbreaks now involve 20 or more employees,” Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said this week. Staff shortages and disruptions in regime operations. Workplace outbreaks create a troubling threat to vulnerable employees and contribute to further spread of the virus in the families and communities where our staff live.
Rising and reductive waves of COVID-19 have hampered efforts by many employers to get staff back to the workplace on a normal basis after their buildings were emptied more frequently at the beginning of the pandemic. The average working population has not yet reached part of what it was before the pandemic, and any gains made decrease each time new variants are strengthened.
According to Kastle Systems, which supplies key card access systems that are used in many corporations and tracks workers’ scanning patterns, the national average working population hit a low of 14. 6% in mid-April 2020. about four percent in late June, when the pandemic resurfaced and staff watched the Fourth of July holiday.
Los Angeles was below the national average, at 38. 5%, which also reflects a recent decline. San Francisco’s white-collar employers appear to be among the most cautious in the country, with a working population falling to 30% from just 35% at the end of June.
In Los Angeles County, outbreaks occur on job sites with the number of employees, adding airports. At the Transportation Security Administration at Los Angeles International Airport, 137 cases were reported among employees. American Airlines at LAX has noted 94 cases among its workforce; Southwest Airlines had 38 instances at Hollywood Burbank Airport and 28 at its Terminal 1 at LAX.
Businesses related to the production and sale of food are also affected. Smithfield Foods is coming in Vernon, which processes pigs, with 54 cases; Costco in Burbank, with 38; Whole Foods Market in Glendale, with 30; and Lee Kum Kee in the industry, which produces Asian sauces, with 28.
The Apple Store in Manhattan Beach has 27 boxes; Ikea in Burbank has 21.
Aerospace corporations have reported several groups, Raytheon in El Segundo, with 34 cases; Lisi Aerospace in Torrance, with 31; and Aerospace Corp. in El Segundo, with 26.
Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank reported 49 cases; the group occurred a month after the study began asking workers to return to the workplace at least 3 days a week.
The JCA Shalom camp in Sylmar has 29 instances and forty-five non-instances. Other workplaces with 30 or more instances come with Starr Surgical of Monrovia, Newegg of Industry, Southland Box Co. by Vernon, Progressive Gaming of Hawaiian Gardens, and VCA Animal Specialty
The number of outbreaks occurring in nursing homes is also a cause for great fear for county fitness officials.
Last week, investigations were underway in 41 nursing homes, five times more than at the beginning of May. Many involve 15 or more instances at a singles center, he said.
“A troubling recent location is that we are now seeing a higher percentage of our overall outbreak-related deaths in professional nursing facilities,” Ferrer said. “In May, about five percent of all deaths occurred among nursing home residents. Unfortunately, that number rose to 12% in June.
A higher proportion of COVID-19-related deaths now occur among other people over the age of 80. In May, this age organization accounted for 44% of deaths; a month later, 58%.
“The increase in instances in the network creates a greater threat to the most vulnerable, who are the least likely to be infected,” Ferrer said. “We are now seeing the most new outbreaks in professional nursing services since January of this year. “
Overall, Los Angeles County averages about a hundred COVID-19 deaths in a week, double the rate a month ago. At the height of last winter’s Omicron wave, the county had more than 500 deaths in a week.
Transmission remains high. Los Angeles County reports an average of 6800 coronavirus cases per day, the most since February and a 35% increase since last week. The most recent rate is 469 weekly cases per day with a population of 100,000; a rate of one hundred or more is high.
The daily case rate is not as high as that seen in Omicron’s surge, which peaked at 42,000 but exceeded last summer’s Delta surge peak of 3,500.
However, the official count of instances is a significant insufficient coverage, given the wide availability of home controls, the effects of which are not reliably reported. Among the reported control effects, Los Angeles County reports a 17% positivity rate, more than doubling this time last month.
“Many in-network health care providers tell us they see a positivity rate close to 40 percent among their patients coming in for treatment,” Ferrer said.
As of Thursday, there were about 1223 more people infected with coronavirus in Los Angeles County hospitals, double the previous month and the highest since February.
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5:30 a. m. , July 19, 2022 An earlier edition of this article reported that Los Angeles County reported 10. 5 weekly coronavirus hospitalizations on Thursday. It reported 10. 5 new weekly coronavirus hospitalizations consistent with a population of 100,000.
The rate of coronavirus hospitalizations has increased by 25% in a week without getting married. On Thursday, the Department of Public Health said Los Angeles County reported 10. 5 weekly coronavirus admissions consistent with a population of 100,000, up from 8. 4 last week.
On Thursday, the first time since February that weekly hospital admissions exceeded 10 according to 100,000 residents, placing the county at the top of the COVID-19 network, as explained by the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. USA
About 42% of coronavirus-positive patients in Los Angeles County are being treated for COVID-19 disease; the rest are hospitalized for other reasons. However, patients infected with coronavirus constitute a potential burden on the health system, due to the greater resources to isolate them.
“Although many other hospitalized people are not there because of COVID disease, the emerging numbers imply that for a significant number of other people, COVID is still a very harmful virus,” Ferrer said.
In addition, the percentage of weekly emergency room visits for coronavirus-like issues has doubled from 5% in mid-May to 10% now.
“This indicates that COVID is putting increasing pressure on our medical systems as viral transmission increases and there are many more inflamed people who have poor enough health to seek emergency medical care,” Ferrer said.
Times editor Anousha Sakoui contributed to the report.
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Rong-Gong Lin II is a San Francisco-based subway reporter who specializes in covering safety issues opposed to statewide earthquakes and the COVID-19 pandemic. The Bay Area local graduated from UC Berkeley and the Los Angeles Times in 2004.
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Luke Money is a Metro reporter who covers the latest news in the Los Angeles Times. In the past he was a city reporter and deputy editor for the Daily Pilot, a Times Community News publication in Orange County, and prior to that, he wrote for the Santa Clarita Valley Signal. She earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Arizona.
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Roger Vincent covers real estate ads for the Los Angeles Times business segment.
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