With a state-mandated overnight curfew set to go into effect in Los Angeles County on Saturday night, West Hollywood’s sheriff’s station officials say they intend to warn people they are violating curfew if found out after 10 p.m. but not issue citations tonight.
The sheriff’s station watch commander told WEHOville deputies would give people the benefit of the doubt and issue verbal warnings if they are found on the streets and sidewalks after 10 p.m., at least on this first night of the curfew.
Sheriff’s officials are unaware of any mass gatherings that are planned in West Hollywood to deliberately violate curfew as an act of protest. However, there appears to be such a protest gathering planned in Beverly Hills tonight.
On Thursday, the state ordered that all the counties in the “purple” tier, the most restrictive tier of the state’s coronavirus monitoring system, go into a month-long overnight curfew. Some 41 of the state’s 58 counties are covered by this curfew including all of Southern California.
Curfew hours run 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., but essential workers are exempt. The curfew is currently scheduled to last until Dec. 21, but could be extended beyond that.
The curfew is the latest attempt at getting control of the coronavirus pandemic. New COVID-19 case numbers have skyrocketed in the past few weeks.
On Saturday, Los Angeles County recorded another 4,522 new cases and 34 deaths. Over the past four days, the county has had 17,769 new cases reported.
There are 1,391 people with COVID-19 currently hospitalized and 26% of these people are in the ICU. This is nearly a doubling of the daily number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 since the beginning of October where the daily number of hospitalized patients was under 700.
State and county officials fear this huge surge in the number of cases will overwhelm the hospitals as people get sick. The state-mandated curfew is an attempt to slow the spread of the virus.
Officials say a lot of the people who are newly infected became infected via social gathering in private homes. People tend to let their guard down, ignore social distancing and take their masks off at these private gatherings. The curfew is an attempt to curb the number of private gatherings.
In West Hollywood, the city recorded 21 new cases for a cumulative total of 868 cases since the pandemic began. The city has seen 98 new cases recorded in the past week.
Below are the daily numbers for areas near West Hollywood:
- Beverly Hills – 15 new cases for a total of 885 cases.
- Culver City – 22 new cases for a total of 550 cases.
- Hollywood – 39 new cases for a total of 1,722 cases.
- Melrose neighborhood – 52 new cases for a total of 2,595 cases.
- Park La Brea – 2 new cases of a total of 178 cases.
Can we do this curfew thing all the time?
On top of directly reducing transmission opportunities, this curfew sends a clear message that we are at a dangerous point in the pandemic, and hopefully will encourage people to keep their guard up and perhaps even heighten it until an effective vaccine is widely available and adopted.
I’ll ignore it like everything else by the French Laundry idiot. Just finished my 2AM run unmolested.
So brave of you.
Thanks for the insightful feedback.
Have a great day