Reprinted from Deadline Hollywood by Tom Tapp on March 22, 2021.
“The R has been creeping up steadily now for the past 3 weeks,” said Dr. Christina Ghaly, the Director of the Department of Health Services for Los Angeles County on Monday. That rate is the calculated rate of Covid-19 transmission in the county.
County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer reported in a Zoom meeting with reporters that the estimated transmission number was 0.93 in early March, up from 0.87 the week before. The range of uncertainty is from .085 to 1.04. Any R number over 1 means that every person infected is passing the virus on to more than one other county resident. In a region of 10 million, infections can quickly snowball.
According to an L.A. County report issued Monday, the rate of decrease in patients at local hospitals has also begun slowing. The report says that, because of the range of uncertainty in the R number, it is currently unclear if “the number of hospitalizations will continue to decrease, remain stable, or increase.” …
