LA County reports close to 14,000 new COVID-19 cases breaking the record set just Thursday.
This pushes total cases past 501,000.
That means about 5% of all county residents have tested positive since the pandemic began.
There are more than four times as many people hospitalized with COVID-19 than there were a month ago.
The state says ICU capacity in the Southern California is down to 6.2%.
"In LA County we are in unchartered territory at this point. We are seeing daily numbers of cases and hospitalizations that we have not experienced and frankly did not anticipate," says Barbara Ferrer, the county's public health director.
"We're on a very dangerous track to seeing unprecedented and catastrophic suffering and death here in LA County if we can't stop the surge," she says.
Even if everyone now heeded the advice to stay home as much as possible, it could take a couple of weeks to see hospitalization rates drop. Given the huge numbers of new cases being reported this week, the wave of patients is expected to keep growing for a while.
Ferrer warns hospitalizations may nearly double over the next two weeks.
If this post-Thanksgiving surge is followed by another one after Christmas, she says the results could be "catastrophic."
Average daily deaths have nearly tripled over the past month. Total fatalities are up to about 8,200.
