In an alarming new record, daily coronavirus cases surpass 10,500 in L.A. County
LA TimesIntensive care nurse Naomi Okonofua, at work earlier this year at Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital. “I am positive that we haven’t seen the full increases in our case numbers associated with the Thanksgiving holiday, just based on the timeline,” L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Sunday. Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes said Saturday that deputies would not be dispatched to calls involving face coverings, gatherings or stay-at-home rules, calling compliance “a matter of personal responsibility and not a matter of law enforcement.” Orange County tallied a record number of new coronavirus cases in a single day Sunday: 2,025, surpassing the record-setting 1,966 cases the county reported Saturday. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco called the new stay-at-home order “flat-out ridiculous” and criticized the state for threatening to cut funding to counties that didn’t comply with the state’s COVID-19 guidelines for reopening. “He is expecting us to arrest anyone violating these orders, cite them and take their money, close their businesses, make them stay in their homes and take away their civil liberties, or he will punish all of us.” Riverside County hit its seventh consecutive daily record for COVID-19 hospitalizations with 687 hospitalized, according to data released Saturday; that’s more than five times worse than early October, when about 135 were hospitalized.