Month: July 2020

L.A. County’s health department is investigating reports of two COVID-19 deaths at a Commerce food processing facility, one of three in the county that have been allowed to reopen after being closed earlier this week for failing to report coronavirus outbreaks, officials said Thursday. The deaths were reported at Mission Foods Corp., which has had 49 employees test positive for the virus, L.A. County Health Officer Dr. Muntu Davis said in a Thursday briefing. The health department said one of the people who died was an L.A. County resident, and the other lived outside the department’s jurisdiction. The head of maintenance at the facility, 67 year-old Jose Roberto Alvarez, died of COVID-19 last week and it is believed he contracted the coronavirus at his Commerce wor...

Coronavirus aerosol spread is a real risk, the World Health Organization said a few weeks ago after more than 200 researchers urged the WHO to acknowledge the issue. But the organization maintains that droplet transmission is the primary way COVID-19 spreads. A new study looked at how COVID-19 moved inside the closed environment of the Diamond Princess cruise ship that was quarantined in Japan in early February, finding that aerosol transmission may be a worse phenomenon than we thought. The research follows other studies that proved virus from aerosols can infect cells, and that showed taller people are twice more likely to be infected. The Diamond Princess cruise ship gained worldwide notoriety in early February when Japanese authorities quarantined the boat in Port of Y...

The first two cases of people infected with West Nile virus in Los Angeles County for the 2020 season were identified this month, public health officials announced Thursday. While L.A. County confirmed its first positive test in a mosquito in early June, two residents of the San Fernando Valley region were reported to now have the virus, according to the county’s Department of Public Health. One case is in an “older adult” with no underlying illnesses who was hospitalized with neuroinvasive disease in early July and is recovering, and the second case was detected in late July in a healthy blood donor, whose positive blood units were discarded, officials said. The case count excludes Long Beach and Pasadena, since cases identified in those cities are reported by their loc...

COMMERCE, Calif. (KABC) -- An investigation is underway following the death of two employees of Mission Foods, one of three food-processing facilities in Los Angeles County ordered to temporarily shut down after outbreaks of COVID-19. Alisha Alvarez had identified one of the workers who died as her 67-year-old father, Jose Alvarez. He was one of more than 40 workers who tested positive for the virus at the Commerce facility. In late June, he told his family and employer that he felt ill and ended up going to the hospital. "We were scared for him in particular because he had diabetes, because he had high blood pressure and he assured us that he was making sure he himself was safe," his daughter said. "You know, he always had his mask on, he always had his gloves on." On July 5, his daugh...