Los Angeles (AFP)

The number of Covid-19 patients hospitalized in Los Angeles hit a new record this weekend, with health authorities in the megalopolis being particularly concerned about the high infection rate among young adults.

In Florida, another focus of the epidemic on American soil, the health crisis continued to worsen and there were only 18% of beds available in intensive care units on Monday.

Los Angeles County, which represents ten million inhabitants alone, recorded 2,216 hospital patients on Sunday after contracting the new coronavirus, against 2,193 on July 15, the date of the previous record.

Among the patients currently hospitalized, 26% are in an intensive care unit and 19% have been placed on a ventilator, underline the health authorities.

"We continue to reach worrying levels," said county public health director Barbara Ferrer.

"At the moment, young adults are hospitalized at a rate never seen before", she noted, before warning this category of the population. "As young as you are, you are vulnerable to this virus."

According to official figures, more than half of 2,848 new cases of Covid-19 identified on Sunday concerned patients aged 40 or under.

The record of hospitalizations was accompanied in Florida by a series of cases of severe inflammatory syndrome affecting children. Fifteen of them were diagnosed last week after developing this multisystemic inflammatory syndrome, linked to infection with the new coronavirus.

Nationally, this syndrome has already caused the death of six children.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti renewed his warnings of the pandemic on Sunday, once again repeating that the city was "on the brink" of new containment due to the surge in Covid-19 cases in recent weeks.

The mayor also felt that California had lifted too early the health restrictions it had yet been the first state to impose at the end of March.

"Mayors often have no control over what reopens and what not, it is played at the state or county level, and I recognize that these reopenings have come too quickly," Eric Garcetti said on CNN.

In Florida, more than 9,500 people suffering from Covid-19 were in hospital on Monday, with more than 10,300 new cases recorded in 24 hours, and more than 5,000 deaths in total since the start of the pandemic.

Criticized for his management of the health crisis and in particular his refusal to order the wearing of the generalized mask, the governor of Florida Ron DeSantis called on his patients to do a serological test and to donate their plasma if they had antibodies.

According to some experts, this plasma transfusion could help patients with the most severe forms of Covid-19 to fight infection.

© 2020 AFP