Los Angeles County public health officials on Sunday reported 1,192 new cases of COVID-19 and nine related deaths but said both numbers were artificially low because of a weekend reporting lag.
L.A. County has reported totals of more than 222,000 cases and more than 5,240 deaths.
The latest case numbers did not include a pending backlog of lab reports the county has been expecting the state to send via its electronic reporting system for more than a week. The backlog was generated by a series of data failures that led to hundreds of thousands of test results not being uploaded into the system. It’s unclear how many of the unreported results were from L.A. County and whether they will change the picture of how the virus is continuing to spread here. Numbers of deaths and hospitalizations were not affected by the reporting issue, officials said.
There were 1,341 confirmed COVID-19 patients in L.A. County hospitals as of Saturday, with about 32% in intensive care, according to the state. In mid-July, there were about 2,200 patients.
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