LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles County’s nursing homes have observed an extraordinary increase in coronavirus case rates during the omicron surge — reaching levels exceeding even last winter’s wave — but that unprecedented torrent of infections hasn’t been matched by a record-high number of daily COVID-19 deaths, county health data show.
The county has instead observed a relatively small increase in daily COVID-19 deaths at nursing homes during the omicron surge, officials said. And new daily coronavirus cases have already started to drop.
As of mid-January, L.A. County was tallying a daily COVID-19 death rate of 20 fatalities for every 100,000 nursing home residents. That’s about one-fifth of the peak of last winter’s surge, and roughly one-fourth the rate of the pandemic‘s early days in spring 2020, according to figures presented by L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer.
