LOS ANGELES (CNS) — Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said Tuesday the department's operations have been significantly impacted by the number of officers in quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19.
Last week, a total of 562 department personnel tested positive for COVID-19, up from 424 the week before. During the previous week, only 82 COVID- 19 cases were reported within the department, Moore said.
The average recovery time for employees to come back to work after testing positive is about 24 days, Moore said. There are currently 803 department employees quarantined, while just one month ago, the number of quarantined employees was 89, Moore said.
The department has a total of 9,524 sworn employees and 2,689 civilian employees.
"Moving forward, the department does have contingency plans to ensure that we continue to maintain essential patrol, investigations involving violent crime, and our 911 services," Moore said. "We're using overtime as necessary to ensure that our civilian and sworn personnel have the resources needed to staff these positions."
He added that there are "additional levers" the department can invoke to augment staffing and ensure necessary services are provided to the city.
The department's vaccination rate is about 84%, Moore said, and about 22% of the people currently testing positive for the virus are vaccinated. County health officials have stressed that unvaccinated people remain 21 times more likely to wind up hospitalized with COVID than vaccinated people.
The department's recruit academy is currently shut down due to a COVID-19 outbreak, but is expected to reopen on Sunday.
Coronavirus cases throughout the county have surged in recent weeks, with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health reporting an additional 43,582 new cases on Monday, bringing the county's cumulative number of cases throughout the pandemic over the 2 million mark.