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L.A. County COVID-19 Death Toll Nears 5,000 Not Counting Backlogged Data

Los Angeles County director of public health Barbara Ferrer said Monday that there were 19 new deaths reported in the region from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing the total in the cities of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Pasadena to 4,996 since the outbreak began in March.

The new total does not include delayed data from the state, which Ferrer says they have not received and have not processed.

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Still, the latest county coronavirus numbers released today continued downward trends Ferrer said during a news conference made her “cautiously optimistic.” L.A. County reported 1,920 new cases for the day, which she said was a a fairly accurate count despite the data backlog that has dogged the state.

There are now 210,424 total confirmed COVID-19 cases in the region and 1,514 hospitalizations. All continue downward trends in those metrics.

Ferrer’s presser included charts that showed the county’s total cases and deaths as a percentage of the state’s totals declining over the past month. The region’s cases have dipped to 37% of the state’s total, and less than 50% of the state’s total deaths.

She said cases, positivity rate and hospitalization figures are all down over the past months. Deaths have been trending lower since end of July.

“I know we’re seeing now the results of everyone’s hard work, and the sacrifices,” she said.

Ferrer also reported that almost 2 million have been tested in the county to date, with a positivity rate of 10%, and that more than 210,000 have been given isolation orders via the contact tracing program.

In Sacramento, California Gov. Gavin Newsom today held a news conference for the first time since the state admitted that multiple errors had caused a backlog of 250,000-300,000 records in its data-reporting system used primarily to parse and distribute coronavirus data. The glitches suggest the database had been undercounting daily coronavirus case numbers for at least two weeks.

On Sunday, the state’s Director of Public Health Dr. Sonia Angell resigned, presumably over the data lapse.

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