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Los Angeles County’s nursing homes have observed an extraordinary increase in coronavirus case rates during the Omicron surge — reaching levels exceeding even last winter’s wave — but that unprecedented torrent of infections hasn’t been matched by a record-high number of daily COVID-19 deaths, county health data show.

The county has instead observed a relatively small increase in daily COVID-19 deaths at nursing homes during the Omicron surge, officials said. And new daily coronavirus cases have already started to drop.

As of mid-January, L.A. County was tallying a daily COVID-19 death rate of 20 fatalities for every 100,000 nursing home residents. That’s about one-fifth of the peak of last winter’s surge, and roughly one-fourth the rate of the pandemic‘s early days in spring 2020, according to figures presented by L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer.

Skilled nursing facility deaths from COVID-19 since March 2020.(Los Angeles County Department of Public Health)
Skilled nursing facility deaths from COVID-19 since March 2020.(Los Angeles County Department of Public Health)

“The extraordinarily high case rate has not caused a similar high increase in deaths among residents compared to our previous surges,” Ferrer said. “We attribute these lower numbers to very high vaccination rates amongst nursing home residents.”

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