While COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in LA County continue to drop, the estimated transmission rate is going up.
It's been creeping up for a couple of weeks.
The number is now close to 1. Anything above that means we can expect cases to start rising.
And the latest estimate reflects what was happening with transmission earlier this month, before the latest round of reopenings began.
"It is uncertain if the number of hospitalizations will continue to decline, if they will be stable or if they will start to increase," says Dr. Christina Ghaly, who is the county's health services director. "Time will tell what this really means and we don't have sufficient information yet to know if this will result in an uptick in infections but we all need to remain vigilant."
For now, Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer says our current case counts are comparable to what we were seeing early in the pandemic.
"While the majority of the LA County population has not yet been vaccinated, the increasing rate of vaccination that we are seeing here likely is beginning to help reduce transmission," says Ferrer.
It's unclear how the circulation of more contagious variants will play out. Ferrer says she hopes immunity gained during the winter surge and increasing vaccinations will help us avoid another devastating wave of infections and deaths.]