LOS ANGELES >> COVID-19 is once again climbing to troubling levels in California — a worrying trend as health officials attempt to navigate a vaccine landscape thrown into uncertainty by delays and decisions from the Trump administration.

Public health departments in Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties have reported jumps in the coronavirus concentrations detected in wastewater in recent weeks. L.A. County has also reported a small increase in patients hospitalized with COVID.

“There is a lot of COVID out there,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert at UC San Francisco. “COVID is coming a little bit later than last year.”

The rate at which COVID lab tests came back positive in L.A. County is 12.6% for the week that ended Aug. 16, up from 7.6% a month earlier. In Orang

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