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The coronavirus testing website at Dodger Stadium will reopen Monday after being closed over the weekend for restructuring in a bid to chop down on site visitors, which has drawn complaints from neighborhood residents, officers stated.
Long traces of vehicles may typically be seen snaking across the huge drive-through testing website, which the town has described as the biggest within the nation, and spilling into adjoining streets.
“We were receiving a few complaints from neighbors in the area that traffic was hindering, on some days, their ability to do daily activities,” stated David Ortiz, public info officer for the Los Angeles Fire Department. “So we took that into advisement and planned out with the Dodgers a way to improve the situation.”
The Dodgers made a further parking zone accessible. Fire Department personnel and engineers with the Los Angeles Department of Transportation used site visitors cones to create 4 meandering lanes for vehicles to journey by, “which takes the traffic off city streets and puts it on the Dodgers property,” Ortiz stated.
Officials estimate the adjustments will end in greater than 600 autos being rerouted from surrounding streets every day, he stated.
The testing website was shut down Saturday so staff may herald hundreds of site visitors cones, lighting and mills to finish the work. It was additionally closed Thursday and Friday for the New Year’s vacation. The testing website will reopen Monday and operates Monday by Saturday from 8 a.m. to eight p.m.
The website, operated by the town of L.A. in partnership with the L.A. Fire Department, the Dodgers, Curative and the nonprofit Community Organized Relief Effort, has administered greater than 1 million exams since May, Mayor Eric Garcetti stated. It now has the power to carry out 13,300 exams a day, Ortiz stated.
“It’s important to note that even though the vaccine has started to be made available to healthcare workers, we don’t want to let our guard down,” Ortiz stated. “We want to make sure that we are following all the protocols of masks, social distancing, washing our hands and testing to make sure that we are safe and we are keeping our neighbors safe as well.”
That comes as L.A. County continues to report a surge in coronavirus infections. Public well being officers stated new instances are accelerating on the quickest tempo for the reason that begin of the pandemic. L.A. County has added 400,000 new coronavirus instances in simply over a month. It took the county 10 months, from Jan. 26 to Nov. 30, to tally its first 400,000 instances.
And the toll continues to worsen.
On Sunday, a further 11,513 new coronavirus instances have been reported within the county, in keeping with a Times rely of native well being jurisdictions. Over the final three days, L.A. County has reported a mean of about 16,000 new coronavirus instances a day, one of many highest such numbers within the pandemic.
Also, a further 85 COVID-19 deaths have been reported Sunday, the most recent in a grim vacation season that noticed the very best single-day demise tallies within the final week, together with 242 on Tuesday, 262 on Wednesday, 291 on New Year’s Eve, and 193 on New Year’s Day.
Combined, 184 deaths have been reported on common daily during the last week, the very best such quantity on file — the equal of a demise each eight minutes.
January will probably be “the darkest month we will have,” Garcetti stated Sunday.
Hospitalizations continued to crest: There have been 7,697 COVID-19 sufferers in L.A. County hospitals as of Saturday, in keeping with knowledge launched by the state Sunday, a rise of 783 individuals from the Saturday earlier than.
In one other worrying development, Garcetti stated, extra individuals who should not have underlying well being circumstances are dying of COVID-19. Earlier within the pandemic, about 92% of people that died had preexisting well being circumstances; that quantity has now dropped to about 86%, officers stated.
“So, my message to everybody is this is not only going to come for somebody that you love,” Garcetti stated Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “This is going to possibly come for you. And so everything we do is either lifesaving or life-taking at this point.”
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