LA County says service outage forced delay in COVID-19 reports, 6,700 currently hospitalized

Doctors, nurses and patients spend Christmas in the hospital due to COVID

Hospitals across Southern California are stretched thin because of the pandemic. FOX 11 visited with a patient who is trying to recover from the coronavirus at a Mission Hills hospital.

LOS ANGELES - Health officials say a service outage is crippling their ability to release the latest COVID-19 data for Los Angeles County.

The Los Angeles County Public Health says the Spectrum service outage in SoCal is going to cause severe delays in releasing the county's daily reports.

As of Christmas Day, LA County Public Health says 6,708 people are currently hospitalized for COVID-19, with 20% of the patients in the ICU.

The latest hospitalization numbers come as hospitals across Southern California are stretched thin due to a surge in COVID-19 cases.

According to the state, below is the current ICU capacity of each California region as of Christmas Day*:

Bay Area: 9.8%
Greater Sacramento Region: 16.7%
Northern California: 36.3%
San Joaquin Valley: 0.0%
Southern California: 0.0%

*= information taken from California Department of Public Health

As of this weekend, Southern California remains under Governor Gavin Newsom's stay-at-home order. The ordinance kicked in after the region's ICU capacity dropped below the 15% threshold. SoCal is technically eligible to get out of the order on Monday, December 28 should the region improved its ICU capacity numbers. However, given where things stand, it's likely the order will remain in effect longer than the original expiration date, Gov. Newsom said earlier in the week.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Gov. Newsom says SoCal stay-at-home order likely to be extended past Dec. 28 expiration date

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