LOS ANGELES — Coronavirus case and hospitalization rates have risen dramatically in Los Angeles County, which on Thursday reentered the medium COVID-19 community level for the first time since the end of the summer omicron wave.
The increasing rates of hospitalization — which are so rapid they are coming as a surprise to officials — raise the prospect of a return to an indoor mask mandate in L.A. County in the coming weeks, based on previously established criteria by local public health officials. But it remains uncertain whether that threshold will be met.
L.A. County’s coronavirus case rate has been increasing since late October, triple what it was in the autumn low. For the week that ended Thursday, L.A. County was recording 2,710 cases a day — or 188 cases a week for every 100,000 residents. A case rate of 100 or more is considered high. The autumn low was a weekly rate of 60, set on Oct. 21.
