Norwalk at 135 cases, including at three nursing homes

NORWALK - Norwalk is now at 135 confirmed cases of coronavirus officially as of Wednesday.

This follows an alarming overnight spike of nearly 1500 new cases diagnosed in Los Angeles County earlier in the week on Monday.

However, officials cautioned to not be alarmed by the sudden increase.

“Today’s dramatic increase in case counts should not cause undue alarm,” health officials said on Monday. “As part of efforts to increase testing capacity in the county, many new labs responded to the emergency and are working with Public Health to ensure that they have the proper reporting systems in place. Until this reporting issue is resolved, there may be periodic increases in positive cases and total cases due to unevenness in daily reporting.”

Over the weekend, the California Department of Public Health released a list of 258 skilled nursing facilities across the state to have reported having one or more confirmed coronavirus cases by either a resident or health care worker as of April 17.

More than half of the facilities on the list were within L.A. County, including Norwalk’s Norwalk Meadows Nursing Center, Norwalk Skilled Nursing and Wellness Centre, and Southland Living.

All three Norwalk facilities were counted as having less than 11 positive cases for staff, and none counted amongst patients, according to the report.