As daily positive COVID-19 cases begin to decrease in L.A. County, Mayor Eric Garcetti said he believes there will not be additional closures to any sectors.

For the first time since the first week of December, L.A. County recorded two straight days of less than 10,000 positive COVID-19 cases and has seen a 7% decrease in hospitalizations.

“As we see the cases come down… it may be that now as we see a drop off of half or maybe even two-thirds of some of the cases, that we may not need to close anything more,” Garcetti said in a COVID-19 briefing, Thursday. “Our hospitals stretched thin, but have been able to hold on and not go into crisis mode… we may not require any further closures at this time, but that will always depends on our behavior.”

L.A. County increased its lockdown restrictions on December 5, as a holiday surge led southern California Intensive Care Units to fill up to capacity.

Since that point, L.A. County has seen its restaurants shut down indoor dining, while hair salons, barbershops, personal care services, museums, zoos and aquariums were all asked to fully shut down.

As L.A. County attempts to ramp up its COVID-19 vaccination efforts, at the current pace of vaccine distribution, it would not be able to fully vaccinate all health care workers and seniors 65 and older until June, let alone be able to move forward in its vaccination phases.

“That is a correct calculation,” Garcetti said when addressing the reported June estimations, while iterating that the county is receiving about 160,000 vaccines a week, but he also believes that the current pace will accelerate when additional vaccines from pharmaceutical companies such as Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca get approved in the U.S.

“When you expand that to the 7.5 million… that the department of public health at the county level expects to get a vaccination… we’re talking about being in June 2022 at the current pace here,” Garcetti said. “I want our state leaders to hear that, I want our federal leaders to hear that and I want our private sector who is producing this vaccine to hear it. We are ready to do more here.”

L.A. Public Health reported 8,512 single-day cases of COVID-19 and 262 deaths, Thursday. The 7-day positive case rate has decreased by 30 percent with 10,560 daily cases, compared to 15,182 a week ago.

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