LA County school COVID outbreaks rise as BA.2 gains traction

A sharp rise in coronavirus outbreaks at Los Angeles County K-12 schools amid building traction of the BA.2 “subvariant of concern” were among the latest signs of caution offered by public health officials on Tuesday, April 5.

From March 28 to April 3, schools experienced 10 outbreaks — moving from what had been weeks of “low” levels of such outbreaks to a “moderate” level, Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer told the Board of Supervisors Tuesday in an update.

Schools in the county have long been a bright spot in the fight to control COVID-19, buffered in particular by masking, testing and other measures. The last time the outbreak level at schools was in the “moderate” range was in February.

But “yesterday alone, in just one day, there were 6 new school outbreaks that were documented,” Ferrer said.

Under the county’s “early alert” signals protocol, the outbreaks have prompted public health officials to:

• • Strongly recommend masking for staff and students;
  • Increase ventilation at school facilities;
  • Recommend weekly testing; and
  • Recommend schools to conduct response testing for those with exposure or symptoms.

“We know that these work to prevent further spread and  they help us keep our schools open and school children and staff safe while they are on our campus,” Ferrer said, noting that “we want to make sure that asymptomatic students with an exposure who remain in school during the quarantine period should be wearing masks indoors and getting tested after the exposure.”

The BA.2 subvariant is said to be more infectious than omicron — but the verdict is still out on whether it lands more people in hospitals.

BA.2 accounted for 32% of all specimens found  in the county by the middle of March, Ferrer said, adding that omicron’s BA.1 strain is still the dominant variety in the county, but that  BA.2 was growing.

The 32% number was double the rate at the beginning of March.

Across the globe, BA.2 has become a dominant strain.

“Encouragingly, the WHO did report that in countries with high levels of vaccination — especially among those most vulnerable to COVID-19, the recent cases did not translate yet into high rates of hospitalization or death,” Ferrer said.

But in a county where 1.7 million people 5 and over have yet to get a first dose of the vaccine, Ferrer and county officials continue to be concerned that the virus will find its way into highly impacted areas where “vaccine gaps” leave people most at risk of becoming sick.

Speaking to the board Tuesday, Ferrer reiterated that local COVID case and hospitalization rates are down dramatically from the winter surge, although the decline in infection numbers has leveled off.

She noted that over the past week, the seven-day daily average of new cases was 783 — a 19% increase from the prior week. Average daily deaths, however, remained low at 14 per day, nearly half of the average of 27 per day two weeks ago.

Hospitalizations have also remained low, she said. According to state figures, there were 297 COVID-positive patients reported in county hospitals as of Tuesday, up from 287 a day earlier. There were 42 of those patients being treated in intensive care, down one from the previous day.

Ferrer reported 708 new COVID cases on Tuesday, along with 12 additional virus-related deaths. The new figures gave the county an overall death toll of 31,722, and a cumulative case total of 2,837,430.

The average daily rate of people testing positive for the virus was 0.8% as of Tuesday, roughly the same level as the past several weeks.

Ferrer and Dr. Christina Ghaly, the county’s Health Services director, lamented the thinning out of federal funding that buffered testing and vaccination in uninsured populations.