Coronavirus LA: Officials looking into nursing homes, other locations of outbreaks

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Los Angeles County is investigating what it describes as 12 settings of possible coronavirus outbreaks.

Officials say these are primarily nursing homes, at least one residential care facility, and one group home. They say they are all over the county but won't say which ones or where.

While the number of cases here is going up, New York is now the epicenter of coronavirus in the country.

In early March, New York and California had about the same number of cases but since then New York state has skyrocketed to more than 30,000 while we have about 2,800. As of Wednesday afternoon: New York City has almost 18,000 while Los Angeles is at 799.

Some experts say California started early with social distancing. Also New York City is crowded and has one of the densest populations in the United States.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti says we have to stay aggressive.

"I think our biggest challenge facing us is making sure that we have testing so that we know exactly how widespread this is," Garcetti told ABC News. "Getting equipment and people into our hospitals and caring for those folks that are on the front lines and also of course just making sure that we know indeed the people are all staying at home."

The city of Los Angeles closed Runyon Canyon Park in another effort to keep people safe from the coronavirus. Officials say the size of the crowds over the weekend made social distancing compliance almost impossible.

But not everyone agrees.

"It's a big park," said one parkgoer, Mitch Gries. "There's a lot of room for all of us here and I think it is wrong to close this."

People have been seen buying cartloads of supplies from stores, leaving stores with shelves bare of some products like toilet paper and hand sanitizer.

The city of Manhattan Beach has passed a no-hoarding ordinance, which limits the quantities of certain goods that can be purchased, including sanitizer, frozen food and canned food.