by Steven Felschundneff | steven@claremont-courier.com

Claremont’s confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus jumped again over the weekend to 72 while the county recorded 2074 new cases and 36 deaths from COVID-19, according to a news release from Los Angeles County Public Health on Monday.

The spike in cases here continues to be driven by the outbreak at Country Villa Claremont Healthcare Center which now reports 22 cases among residents and 9 staff members. There have been two death associated with Country Villa Claremont.

Since its first coronavirus update on March 4, health officials have reported 2,926 deaths and identified 73,791 positive cases across all areas of L.A. County. Ninety-three percent of people who died had underlying health conditions. As of Friday, a total of 5,727 people who tested positive for COVID-19 (16% of positive cases) have been hospitalized at some point during their illness. There are 1,285 people currently hospitalized, 31 percent are in the ICU and 24 percent are on ventilators. Testing results available for over  individuals and 8% of people testing positive. Testing capacity continues to increase with results available for over 825,000 individuals, 11 percent of whom tested positive.