The Los Angeles County health officer has suggested that residents reconsider travel to states with the nation’s worst rates of coronavirus transmission, including Nevada and Florida.

“I do want to recommend — especially if you’re unvaccinated — reconsider traveling to places where the seven-day COVID-19 case rates are increasingly high, like Nevada, our neighbor, or Missouri, Florida, Arkansas and Louisiana and others,” Dr. Muntu Davis said in his briefing to the county Board of Supervisors this week.

Arkansas, Missouri, Florida, Nevada and Louisiana have the nation’s highest levels of new coronavirus cases per capita, with weekly rates roughly four to seven times California’s. All five of those states are considered by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as having “high” rates of community transmission, the worst tier of the CDC’s four-tier scale.

California still is considered as having “moderate” community transmission, the second-lowest tier. In California, for every 100,000 residents, 34.9 have newly tested positive over the past week; the comparable figure for Arkansas is 227.1; for Missouri, 183.8; Florida, 168.8; Nevada, 145.8; and Louisiana, 136.1.

Read the full story on LATimes.com.