Myriam Borzee/iStockBy MATT GUTMAN and EMILY SHAPIRO, ABC News
(LOS ANGELES) — Los Angeles County has more cases of coronavirus than any other county in the U.S. as of Wednesday morning.
LA has over 88,500 residents diagnosed with COVID-19, followed by 87,700 cases in Cook County, Illinois, and 64,000 cases in Queens in New York City.
For comparison, the entire state of Florida has 109,000 cases as of Wednesday morning — even with its highest one-day increase of 5,500.
LA County has about 10 million residents while Florida’s population stands at roughly 21.4 million.
In LA County’s fight against the virus, Los Angeles International Airport is implementing thermal camera technology and city officials are bringing mobile testing to about 25,000 people at 15 Los Angeles public housing developments.
LA County is continuing to reopen by phases. Among the open facilities are: bars, wineries, public pools, beaches and piers, day camps, gyms and museums.
Concert venues, nightclubs, youth sports leagues and movie theaters are among the businesses still closed.
On Monday, the director of LA County’s Department of Public Health, Dr. Barbara Ferrer, revealed that she’s received death threats due to the pandemic.
Ferrer said she was holding a COVID-19 briefing on Facebook Live in May “when someone very casually suggested that I should be shot.”
“I didn’t immediately see the message, but my husband did, my children did, and so did my colleagues,” Ferrer said in a statement.
“One reason I handle these briefings myself is to shield the extraordinary team at L.A. County Public Health from these attacks which have been going on, via emails, public postings, and letters — since March,” she continued. “It is deeply worrisome to imagine that our hardworking infectious disease physicians, nurses, epidemiologists and environmental health specialists or any of our other team members would have to face this level of hatred.”
“Our job and our calling is to keep as many people as safe as possible during this pandemic,” Ferrer said. “While frustration boils over in our communities as people are done with this virus, this virus is not done with us.”
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