Hospital numbers have remained relatively low in the county, despite steadily rising COVID infection rates caused by the infectious BA.2 subvariant of COVID-19.
County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Thursday that the county is averaging more than 1,000 new COVID cases per day, up from an average of 878 the previous week.
Some patients might have entered the hospital for other reasons and discovered they were COVID-positive after a mandated test. The county reported 1,355 new cases on Friday, along with 13 virus-related deaths, lifting its totals to 2,850,480 cases and 31,852 deaths since the pandemic began.The BA.2 subvariant, a more infectious offshoot of the Omicron variant that caused a winter surge in cases, is now the dominant strain of the virus in the county, believed to represent 67% of new infections.
While the rising case numbers haven’t yet translated to a significant spike in hospitalizations and deaths, health officials continued Friday to press for more people to get vaccinated or to receive booster shots — warning that the more the virus spreads, the higher the risk it could mutate into a more dangerous form.
“The emergence of the BA.2 subvariant is an important reminder that the more infections we have, the more chances there are for new variants to emerge, which is another reason why it remains important to take safety precautions,” Ferrer said in a statement.
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