County have shown an increase in healthcare workers being infected with the coronavirus, which is expected to “create stress at our healthcare systems,” Ferrer said. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement. A COVID-19 vaccine booster dose restores vaccine effectiveness against infection to 75%,” the U.S. “Data from South Africa and the United Kingdom demonstrate that vaccine effectiveness against infection for two doses of an mRNA vaccine is approximately 35%. People who are eligible for booster shots but haven’t yet received them are at increased risk for infection. The Omicron variant is believed to be two to four times as contagious as the previously dominant Delta variant. “Since most people in our hospitals with serious illness from COVID are unvaccinated, those not yet vaccinated or boosted need to please stay away from others as much as possible to avoid getting infected or infecting others,” she said in a statement Friday. and Orange counties, 14 and Ventura County, 12.įerrer said that all efforts need to focus on keeping hospitals from being overwhelmed. San Diego County has a rate of 15 per 100,000 L.A. Within Southern California, the Inland Empire has among the worst rates, with 27 hospitalizations per 100,000 residents in San Bernardino County and 19 in Riverside County. A rate of 5 or higher is considered concerning. Southern California now has the worst COVID-19 hospitalization rate in the state.įor every 100,000 residents, Southern California is reporting 16 hospitalized COVID-19 patients the Greater Sacramento and San Joaquin Valley areas, 14 rural Northern California, 12 and the Bay Area, 7. 6.ĬOVID-19 hospitalizations have risen most dramatically in the last month in Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area, where the tallies have roughly doubled, and they have increased notably in the Greater Sacramento area, where the rate is up about 30%. But, again, the state’s hospital tally was a fraction of what it was a year ago, when 20,640 people with COVID-19 were in hospitals statewide, nearing the all-time peak of 21,938 recorded Jan. 5, a time when hospital morgues were overflowing.Īcross California, 5,433 COVID-19 patients were hospitalized Thursday, a 48% jump from a week earlier. That was close to the pandemic’s all-time high of 8,098 COVID-19 hospitalized patients, recorded Jan. County had 7,628 coronavirus-positive people in its hospitals. Still, that number is one-fifth of the tally a year earlier, when L.A. 23, when 850 people were hospitalized the most recent tally available showed the number rising to 1,464 as of Thursday. County’s COVID-19 hospitalizations have risen 72% since Dec. Those who have not received a single shot remain at highest risk of severe illness from COVID-19. Still, the huge increases in new coronavirus cases have health officials worried that hospitals - especially in areas with low vaccination rates - may be slammed by a crush of patients if transmission remains this high and the virus is able to find a large number of unvaccinated people. During last winter’s surge, very few people had been vaccinated because of limited supply. It’s also likely that disease severity is lower overall because so many people have been vaccinated. That may be in part because although Omicron appears to be more infectious to the airways, it appears to be less infectious to lung tissue, where infections contribute to respiratory problems and death. Health officials have voiced optimism that symptoms in cases linked to Omicron are less severe than those from earlier variants. The rate among boosted residents was 65 per 100,000.ĭespite the ballooning infection numbers, far fewer patients have been hospitalized with COVID-19 so far in this fifth surge than during the last two surges. The rate for those who are vaccinated but have not gotten a booster shot was 173 per 100,000. The rates are even higher in L.A., Orange and San Francisco counties, where the number is estimated to be 1.7.Ĭoronavirus case rates are rising among people of all vaccination statuses, but unvaccinated people are still the most likely to test positive. The state’s COVID-19 model estimates that in Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area, every infected person is on average transmitting the virus to 1.5 other people - meaning the spread of the virus is increasing rapidly. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, a deputy health officer. In Orange County, it’s adults 18 to 44 who are driving coronavirus transmission, said Dr. Case rates have doubled for children ages 5 to 11 and tripled for adults ages 65 to 79.