It's turkey time in Tinseltown, and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health is dishing out a side of wellness advice along with the cranberry sauce this Thanksgiving. With memories of pandemic holidays still fresh, officials are urging Angelenos to pull up a chair to a healthier holiday scene, complete with vaccines, tests, and treatments for COVID-19, flu, and RSV that can keep potential health party crashers at bay.
The health department has not only been thanking its diligent community partners but also reminding folks to continue to easily forget to practice common-sense measures that can lower disease risk. "Stay up to date on recommended vaccines, stay home when sick, cover coughs and sneezes, and wash hands often," as stated by Los Angeles County Department of Public Health ensuring that friendly gatherings don't turn into virus-spreading events. Adding to the mix, free COVID-19 tests are being dished out like holiday specials, with nearly 879,000 tests distributed to schools and educational settings since the start of October, to keep the cheer unblemished by illness.
While indulging in the season's gastronomic delights, officials insist that good ventilation should be on the menu—open up those windows or take the shindig outdoors if weather permits. And if you're part of the great holiday migration to see distant kin or sands, donning a high-quality mask could be as essential as your travel tickets for those crowded airports and stations, they caution.
The season also comes with a wrap of caution: if you test positive for the resulting running nose or bothersome cough, you should isolate for a minimum of five days and continue to mask up through day ten when in the proximity of others. After day five, as long as symptoms are retreating and fevers have cooled without medication, it's clear to stop isolation, but it's still important "to take extra effort not to expose others," as mentioned on the same news. Public Health also generously offers free telehealth consultations and medications to those eligible for a therapeutic response to COVID.
Los Angeles County can carve into the holidays with some assurance; as of Nov. 11, the CDC ranked the hospital admission level for COVID-19 as low, at 3.7 new hospitalizations per 100,000 people.
