The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health reported 11 new deaths from Covid-19 on Sunday, along with 1,118 new positive cases.
The number of deaths and confirmed cases reported today may reflect delays in weekend reporting. Today’s tallies bring the County to a total of 26,637 deaths and 1,493,170 positive cases.
At the time of reporting, 659 County residents are hospitalized with Covid-19. Covid test results have now been made available to nearly 9,061,000 individuals, with 15% testing positive. Today’s daily test positivity rate is 0.8%.
COVID-19 Daily Update:
October 31, 2021
New Cases: 1,118 (1,493,170 to date)
New Deaths: 11 (26,637 to date)
Current Hospitalizations: 659 pic.twitter.com/BJv5A6WApW— LA Public Health (@lapublichealth) October 31, 2021
Last Thursday, Governor Gavin Newsom warned Californians of a possible winter surge of Covid-19.
“This time last year,” Newsom said on Thursday, “we had about 4,000 cases. One month later we had 18,000 cases. One month after that, we had 54,000.”
California’s positivity rate rose over by 25% in the week-and-a-half before Newsom made that statement. It increased from a post-summer low of 1.9% last Friday to 2.5% on Thursday. That was up from 2.2% on Wednesday of this week, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The bright side is that, even as the case rate begins to rise, booster shots are available to millions of Californians and 3.5 million residents ages 5-11 might become eligible for their first coronavirus vaccination as soon as next week. The hope is that the additional vaccinations among those populations may mitigate a winter surge.
As Newsom himself tweeted on Tuesday, “Winter is coming. Get your booster.”