Los Angeles virus surge raises specter of stay-home order

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles County’s coronavirus cases are rising so fast they could average more than 4,000 a day within three weeks and leave the nation’s most populous county on the cusp of a lockdown and curfew, a public health official said Wednesday.

The county announced new restrictions on businesses that go further than statewide guidelines put in place this week after Gov. Gavin Newsom said he was pulling the “emergency brake” on reopening the economy to try to control a surge.

The new regulations are effective Friday and will limit restaurants — already crippled by the virus and not able to open indoors — to half their outdoor capacity and shut them down at 10 p.m. Nonessential retailers are limited to a quarter of inside capacity.

The changes come as the county has seen its average daily cases nearly triple since Nov. 1 to close to 3,000. The daily case count Wednesday was just below 4,000.

If the county averages more than 4,000 newly reported cases a day or 1,750 hospitalizations, it would end dining and restaurants would only be able to offer food for takeout and delivery. If cases or hospitalizations reach 4,500 or 2,000, respectively, the county will go on lockdown and impose a curfew for three weeks.

“I don’t think it’s inevitable that we do get there,” said Barbara Ferrer, the director of public health. “I hope with every single bone in my body that we don’t get there.”

The county of 10 million residents has had a disproportionately large share of the state's cases and deaths. Although it accounts for a quarter of the state's 40 million residents, it has about a third of the cases and more than a third of the deaths.

Dr. Eric Topol, head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in San Diego, said all the new...