L.A. County reports 18 more COVID-19 deaths, 484 cases

Los Angeles County public health officials on Sunday reported 484 new cases of COVID-19 and 18 coronavirus-related deaths.

Long Beach, which has its own health department, reported an additional 17 cases and one new death, bringing the county’s total to 31,694 cases and 1,531 deaths.

“Each day, we report these numbers knowing that there are people who are grieving their loved ones who have passed away from COVID-19,” Barbara Ferrer, the county public health director, said in a statement. “To all of you, we are so deeply sorry for your loss.”

The number of people in L.A. County who had been tested and received their results rose to 245,000, with about 11% testing positive, she said.

Statewide, California has reported more than 67,000 cases of the virus and 2,700 deaths.

California is one of a handful of states where coronavirus cases and deaths are projected to rise more than researchers expected, according to the latest calculations in a widely relied-upon model of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Christopher Murray, director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, made the disclosure Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“Some other states where cases and deaths are going up more than we expected — Illinois and then Arizona, Florida, California as examples of that,” he said.

The researchers are now predicting California could see more than 6,000 COVID-19 deaths by the end of August, up about 1,420 from projections released on Monday. It’s the fifth-largest increase in projected death tolls among the U.S. states, after Pennsylvania, Illinois, Arizona and Florida.

The institute’s latest projections suggested the nationwide fatality count would reach 137,000 by Aug. 4. It stands now at nearly 80,000.