by Steven Felschundneff | steven@claremont-courier.com

The city of Claremont’s confirmed coronavirus cases continue to climb at a steady rate mirroring the overall trend in the county

In its daily news release the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health reported that Claremont now has 199 cumulative COVID-19 cases, an increase of 44 cases, or 22 percent, in one week. Fortunately Claremont still has only three confirmed deaths and three cases in unincorporated areas.

Countywide public health reported 37 new deaths and 2,770 cases of COVID-19 on Saturday. Since its first report on March 4 the county has identified 153,041 positive cases of COVID-19 across all areas of LA County, and a total of 4,084 deaths.

Currently there are 2,188 people hospitalized with the virus including 28 percent in ICU and 18 percent on ventilators. This is the fourth consecutive day hospitalizations have been over 2,100. Data continue to show that people between the ages of 18 and 40 are being hospitalized at a higher rate than seen at any point during this pandemic.

Los Angeles County issued a new health officer order on Friday in response to a California Department of Public Health directive that schools in 32 counties on the state’s monitoring list, including Los Angeles County, cannot resume in-person learning next month.

In order for schools to re-open, Los Angeles County will have to remain off the monitoring list for 14 consecutive days. Counties remain on the monitoring list as long as they fail to reach several benchmarks indicating the local outbreak has been controlled, including a positivity rate over eight percent, a case rate over 100 per 100,000 residents, a ten percent or greater increase in hospitalizations, as well as having adequate ICU bed availability and reaching testing guidelines.

Los Angeles County is on the monitoring list because it has a positivity rate of nine percent and case rate of 307 per 100,000 residents. However, testing and hospital capacity remain adequate with almost 20,000 people tested daily and 29 percent of ICU beds open and 64 percent of ventilator capacity available.

Individual school districts can apply for a waiver to re-open schools, “after review of local epidemiological data and intervention strategies, and in consultation with CDPH.”

Public Health continues to watch for cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C). that is affecting people under 21 who may have been exposed to COVID-19.

There have been just 15 cases of MIS-C in L.A. County and, fortunately, no children have died. MIS-C is a condition which causes different body parts to become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs.

Forty percent of these cases were between the ages of 0 and 5 years, 40 percent were between the ages of 6 and 12, and 20 percent were between the ages of 13 and 20. The median age was approximately 8.5 years and seventy-three percent of the cases were Hispanic children.