The December surge in COVID-19 had spread widely into communities across Los Angeles County, touching more lives than ever before and making the chances of being exposed to the virus much more likely than ever.

New daily cases have hit levels that are hard to fathom, including one day this week when more than 20,000 new COVID cases were reported in the county. An estimated one in 80 people in L.A. County are now contagious with the virus; that’s far worse than in late September, when scientists calculated that one in 880 county residents were infectious.

The latest reminder of the spread came Thursday, when Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said that his 9-year-old daughter Maya had tested positive. Both Garcetti and his wife tested negative, he said.

Garcetti said he doesn’t know how his daughter was infected. “We haven’t mixed households,” he said. “There’s no behavior that she is engaged in that doesn’t adhere strictly to the protocols of our health officials.”

Read the full story at LATimes.com.