Los Angeles Covid-19 Update: Mayor Eric Garcetti Announces, “The Worst Is Not Behind Us. The Worst Is Right In Front Of Us.”

“The worst is not behind us,” said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Thursday. “The worst is right in front of us.”

As proof of that statement, the mayor announced a massive jump in daily Covid-19 cases, up 2,000 over the previous record set Sunday, to 12,819 new cases. Not long ago, that would have been an eye-popping number for the entire State of California.

L.A.’s number of daily cases is up 128% since last week, Garcetti reported, and 1000% in a little more than a month.

While there is light at the end of the tunnel with vaccine shipments arriving next week, “This is that Thanksgiving surge finally upon us,” he said. He implored Angelenos to help the city avoid an even greater Christmas surge on top of it.

To drive home the point, Garcetti dropped another staggering statistic. “In Los Angeles, someone is dying of COVID-19 every 20 minutes,” he said.

There are 3,634 virus-infected people hospitalized in the county. That’s a 6% increase just since Wednesday and a new high.

ICU availability in Southern California had dipped to just 7.7%, he said.

The news came on the same day that California saw the highest number of COVID-related deaths ever at 220. That, as the nation at large on Wednesday suffered its highest daily number of coronavirus-related deaths at over 3,000.

The number of new cases in the state hit 29,677 on Thursday, the third day in a row the total has been at or just below 30,000.

Given that deaths lag cases by about four weeks, it’s clear the record number of deaths reported in L.A. and California on Thursday is, as Garcetti said, just the beginning of a very bad end to what has been a very bad year.

Watch Garcetti’s speech below.

Tune in to hear the latest on how we’re navigating the hardest stretch of the pandemic and what we need to do to stay safe. https://t.co/eP2n6RE360

— MayorOfLA (@MayorOfLA) December 11, 2020