California seeing new COVID wave

Health agencies report jump in cases of Stratus variant tied to Omicron strain.

- BY RONG-GONG LIN II

GENARO MOLINA Los Angeles Times THE SURGE comes as the Trump administration delays the fall vaccine's rollout.

COVID-19 is once again climbing to troubling levels in California a worrying trend as health officials attempt to navigate a vaccine landscape thrown into uncertainty by delays and decisions from the Trump administration.

Public health departments in Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties have reported jumps in the coronavirus concentrations detected in wastewater in recent weeks. L.A. County also has reported a small increase in patients hospitalized with COVID.

"There is a lot of COVID out there," said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert at UC San Francisco. "COVID is coming a little bit later than last year."

The rate at which COVID lab tests came back positive in L.A. County is 12.6% for the week that ended Aug. 16, up from 7.6% a month earlier. In Orange County, it's 14.4%, up from 8.1%.

"We are seeing outpatient cases increase," said Dr. Elizabeth E. Hudson, the regional physician chief of infectious diseases for Kaiser Permanente Southern California.

"With back-toschool season in full swing ... we are expecting to see an uptick in COVID in children over the next few weeks and this is already being seen in some parts of the country." In a blog post, Dr. Matt Willis, former public health officer for Marin County, wrote that "California's in the middle of a COVID-19 wave, and statewide rates are among the highest in the nation."

Among senior-age residents in Orange County, emergency room visits for COVID-like illness, as well as hospitalizations for COVID, are also on the upswing, said Dr. Christopher Zimmerman, a physician with the Orange County Health Care Agency's Communicable Disease and Control Division, and Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, the county's health officer.