Downey surpasses 2K coronavirus cases

DOWNEY — Downey reached another unfortunate milestone in the coronavirus pandemic this week: more than 2,000 confirmed cases.

As of Wednesday, public health officials had identified 2,014 Downey residents who had contracted the virus.

The virus has killed 52 people here, with many of the victims being nursing home patients.

To date, Public Health has identified 123,004 positive cases of COVID-19 across all areas of LA County, and a total of 3,642 deaths.

There are more than 2,000 people currently hospitalized, 26% of these people are confirmed cases in the ICU and 17% are confirmed cases on ventilators. This remains substantially higher than the 1,350 to 1,450 daily hospitalizations seen four weeks ago.

Health officials confirmed 65 new deaths on Wednesday. Of those, 93% had underlying health conditions.

“We need our residents to repeat what we did just weeks ago if we are going to flatten the curve again,” said health director Barbara Ferrer. “If we can’t get the infection numbers back under control by the end of July, we will see thousands more people that require hospitalizations and that could easily overwhelm our health care system.”