LOS ANGELES (KNX) — There were no plans to shut down businesses in Los Angeles County in the face of the rapidly spreading Omicron COVID-19 variant, L.A. County Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Tuesday.
Ferrer explained that relatively high vaccination rates throughout L.A. County may mitigate the need for any widescale lockdowns.
“We’re obviously going to look very carefully at what are the strategies that are appropriate as we see more and more cases,” she said at a Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday. “But what I do want to note is we’re not where we were last year; we have new tools, so we don’t need to do what we did last year.”
“I know that the thing that’s top of mind is, do we see in this near future closing back down our stores, telling people they have to stay home? And my hope is no,” Ferrer added. “But that’s a hope. And it really depends on us being able to use these new tools we have to the best of our ability to actually be able to mitigate against this pretty big threat that we all face with Omicron."
Ninety-nine cases associated with Omicron were confirmed in L.A. County as of Monday, but none have thus far resulted in hospitalization or death, according to Ferrer.
“The question that remains to be definitively answered is how much severe illness is caused by Omicron,” Ferrer said, noting that if it “causes even the same amount of illness that Delta did, but it infects two or three times as many people ... it can easily overwhelm the healthcare system.”
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