LA County confirms 10 coronavirus cases in South Bay; Manhattan Beach has three confirmed cases
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health today confirmed 25 new cases countywide, bringing the total to 94, and for the first time broke down the locations of those who have tested positive by city.
The South Bay has ten confirmed cases, including three in Manhattan Beach, two each in Torrance and Inglewood, and one each in Carson, Gardena, and San Pedro.
County officials stressed that no one location is safer or more dangerous than any other, and urged residents to implement social distancing practices and to forgo travel and to avoid public places.
“We are seeing a significant increase in cases and evidence of community spread as more testing occurs,” said Barbara Ferrer, Los Angeles County Public Health Director. “We are implementing more social distancing requirements and we expect everyone to do their part.”
At a press conference this afternoon, Ferrer said that the increase marks 41 new cases in the last 48 hours. She said 15 cases are believed to be from community spread. In order to stop this spread, L.A. County officials announced the closure of all bars, fitness centers and movie theaters and ordered restaurants to move to takeout only. Officials are also banning gatherings of over 50 people following a recommendation made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Sunday.
Ferrer said people should expect the new restrictions to be in place at least three weeks.
“The only thing we can really do is look at places like Italy, which we tend to think are three to four weeks in front of where we are in most places in the United States,” Ferrer said. “The data really shows that even once you start being very aggressive with your social distancing measures, it’s generally been about three more weeks before we start to see a decline in the number of cases. Now, that doesn’t mean that is necessarily what is going to happen everywhere in our country, and we could be slightly ahead of where everyone else was when they started taking aggressive measures. We also have a very robust medical care system. But I think people should be prepared for seeing three weeks of increasing cases, and not be surprised if, even though we are doing everything we can, we continue to see that increase. ”
Ferrer said part of the difficulty is the incubation period for novel coronavirus.
“There is a pretty long incubation period for this virus,” Ferrer said. “It’s actually 14 days, which means that if somebody becomes exposed today they might not have any signs or symptoms of the illness for 14 days.”
Ferrer said the assumption at this point has to be that coronavirus could be nearly everywhere in LA County.
“The one thing I just want to clarify is Covid-19 knows no boundaries, and no limits in terms of spread,” she said. “And just because you don’t see your city on this list today doesn’t mean, number one, that you are not going to see a case there tomorrow, and more importantly doesn’t mean that are not people in your community who in fact may be infected with COVID-19 and just have not been diagnosed…..I think it’s really important that residents must assume at this point that there may be people infected everywhere in the county, and some of those people don’t know that they are infected, and some of those people may be able to infect others if we are not diligent about about meeting our obligations, for each one of us to practice social distancing.
Total Cases (via LA County Department of Health)
Laboratory Confirmed Cases: 94
— Los Angeles County (excl. Long Beach and Pasadena): 87
— Long Beach: 5
— Pasadena: 2
By City
Alhambra: 2
Arcadia: 1
Beverly Hills: 1
Boyle Heights: 5
Carson: 1
Culver City: 2
Diamond Bar: 2
Encino: 3
Gardena: 1
Glendale: 2
Glendora: 1
Granada Hills: 3
Inglewood: 2
Koreatown: 1
La Mirada: 2
Lancaster: 1
Manhattan Beach: 3
Melrose: 2
Northridge: 1
San Dimas: 1
San Pedro: 1
Santa Clarita and Stevenson Ranch: 3
Santa Monica: 1
Sherman Oaks: 2
Silverlake: 1
South Pasadena: 1
Tarzana: 5
Torrance: 2
Venice: 1
West Adams: 1
West Hills: 3
West Hollywood: 5
West Vernon: 1
Westchester: 1
Los Angeles City (Neighborhoods fewer than 25,000): 11
Still Investigating: 11