LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles County is officially ending its COVID-19 emergency declaration Friday, a milestone that comes as the region’s coronavirus case rate has fallen to its lowest level since summer 2021.
It’s perhaps fitting that the nation’s most populous county delayed lifting its local declaration, doing so a month after the state. L.A. County has been one of the hardest-hit parts of California — so much so that the National Guard had to transport corpses from overwhelmed hospital morgues during the pandemic’s first winter. Officials also led the nation in sounding the alarm about the danger posed by the Delta variant, which fueled a significant surge the following summer.
But L.A. County health officials, like their counterparts across the state, say the local declaration has served its purpose and the region is now ready to enter a promising new phase.
