The Los Angeles health official suggested that residents reconsider traveling to the states with the worst coronavirus transmission rates in the country, including Nevada and Florida.
“I want to recommend, especially if you are not vaccinated, that you reconsider traveling to places where weekly COVID-19 case rates are increasing, such as Nevada, our neighbor, or Missouri, Florida, Arkansas Louisiana and others,” said the Dr. Muntu Davis in his briefing to the County Board of Supervisors this week.
Those states have the highest levels of new coronavirus cases per capita in the country, with weekly rates roughly four to seven times those of California. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) considers these five entities to have “high” rates of community transmission, the worst on the CDC’s four-tier scale.
California is still considered to have “moderate” community transmission, the second lowest level. In the state, for every 100,000 residents, 34.9 have tested positive in the last week; this figure in Arkansas is 227.1; in Missouri, 183.8; Florida, 168.8; Nevada, 145.8; and Louisiana, 136.1.
Los Angeles’ weekly per capita coronavirus case rate is higher than statewide, but still much lower than the five entities Davis mentioned. The county now reports 59.2 new infections per 100,000 residents weekly, categorized as “substantial” community transmission, the second highest level. San Diego, Riverside, and Sacramento are in the same category: for every 100,000 residents, San Diego has 58.6 weekly cases; Riverside, 50.3; and Sacramento, 92.5.
Orange County is reporting 12.4 infections per 100,000 residents, which puts it in the “moderate” community transmission level. Other areas of Southern California in this category include Ventura (15.7) and San Bernardino (48.1).
In contrast, the rate in Miami-Dade Florida is 160.9 weekly cases per 100,000 residents; and in Orange, also a county in that state and home to Disney World, there have been 135.1 weekly infections per 100,000 residents. Both are considered to have “high” rates of community transmission.
Nevada’s Clark County, where Las Vegas is located, has even worse metrics, with 204 new weekly cases per 100,000 residents. That number is three times higher than in Los Angeles.
As of Thursday morning, two rural Northern California counties, Siskiyou and Lake, reported “high” rates of community transmission, according to the CDC.
Other California counties with “substantial” transmission include Imperial, east of San Diego; Stanislaus and San Benito in central California; San Mateo, Sonoma, Solano, Napa, Nevada, El Dorado and Amador in the Sacramento and Bay Area regions; and Sutter, Yuba, Butte, Lassen, Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte.
While fully vaccinated people are well protected against coronavirus infection, especially hospitalization and death, doctors say more caution should be exercised when community transmission rates are high. The more you are in contact with the coronavirus, the greater the chance that a vaccinated person will contract the virus.
Some physicians have suggested that it is prudent for even fully inoculated people to wear face masks in areas where vaccination rates are low and rates of virus transmission are high.
A San Benito man recently told KGO-TV that he and his wife, who were fully vaccinated, contracted COVID-19 during a trip to Las Vegas and then passed the virus on to their children, who are too young to be inoculated, after they returned home. Since then, the family has recovered, he said.
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