Data Glitch Confounds Coronavirus Totals In Orange County, State
ORANGE COUNTY, CA — Orange County Health Care Agency reported 886 new coronavirus cases and no deaths—the current coronavirus death toll declined to 724 Monday. Residents remain uncertain as to if those figures match reality. The sharp rise in case counts, along with a decline in the coronavirus death toll was part of a data correction from the state and duplicate deaths discovered.
Amid the apparent confusion, the county of Orange has asked residents to look to hospitalization figures if they want to know the truth about coronavirus in our area. As of Monday, 468 residents are hospitalized due to coronavirus, and 152 of those are currently in Intensive Care Units.
UC Irvine has some other ideas on how to study the data trends. It is a professor of statistics who is leading a team intent on studying the trends of coronavirus in our area. Vladimir Minin, a professor of statistics, leads the team responsible for designing and developing UCI’s new COVID-19 statistical trends website.
“Every county reports its coronavirus stats, but useful knowledge can be gained by holding up the numbers against other counties and normalizing by population size, which is what we have done,” Minin says.
The team collects data from the California Open Data Portal.Daniel Parker, UCI Assistant professor of public health, created color coded Orange County maps showing numbers of tests vs. positive tests from March through July.
As of Monday evening, the number of Orange County residents who have been infected with coronavirus stands at 40,527 and 30,657 have recovered, according to figures from Orange County Health Care Agency.
By the city, here are Monday's current case counts:
Aliso Viejo - 292 Total Cases
Anaheim - 6912 Total Cases
Brea - 374 Total Cases
Buena Park - 1129 Total Cases
Costa Mesa - 1322 Total Cases
Coto de Caza - 28 Total Cases
Cypress - 435 Total Cases
Dana Point - 196 Total Cases
Fountain Valley - 387 Total Cases
Fullerton - 1829 Total Cases
Garden Grove - 2198 Total Cases
Huntington Beach - 1810 Total Cases
Irvine - 1254 Total Cases
La Habra - 993 Total Cases
La Palma - 130 Total Cases
Ladera Ranch - 123 Total Cases
Laguna Beach - 144 Total Cases
Laguna Hills - 235 Total Cases
Laguna Niguel - 307 Total Cases
Laguna Woods - 44 Total Cases
Lake Forest - 651 Total Cases
Los Alamitos - 156 Total Cases
Midway City - 83 Total Cases
Mission Viejo - 614 Total Cases
Newport Beach - 932 Total Cases
Orange - 1853 Total Cases
Placentia - 728 Total Cases
Rancho Mission Viejo - 46 Total Cases
Rancho Santa Margarita - 262 Total Cases
Rossmoor - 29 Total Cases
San Clemente - 347 Total Cases
San Juan Capistrano - 306 Total Cases
Santa Ana - 7826 Total Cases
Seal Beach - 227 Total Cases
Silverado - 42 Total Cases
Stanton - 490 Total Cases
Trabuco Canyon - 159 Total Cases
Tustin - 963 Total Cases
Villa Park - 42 Total Cases
Westminster - 723 Total Cases
Yorba Linda - 529 Total Cases
Orange County Supervisor Lisa Bartlett said the large number of coronavirus cases reported Monday is a reflection of the state fixing its glitch in its reporting system and a backlog of cases coming to light.
"You're going to see some spikes (in coronavirus cases), but it's not necessarily that our cases are spiking, just the reporting of them are," she said. "I don't want the public to get alarmed when they see this spike in numbers. They've had to go back and reconcile some things in the (state) system."
Hospitalization rates continued it's downward trend, and those numbers are not affected by the reporting problems.
As of Monday, the number of people hospitalized dropped from 487 Sunday to 468, according to the HCA, with the number of patients in intensive care units dipping from 163 to 152.
The rate of residents testing positive for COVID-19 in the county inched down from 7.7% to 7.4%. The state's desired threshold is 8%. Its case rate per 100,000 residents decreased from 90 to 82.1, but is far higher than the California Department of Public Health threshold of 25 per 100,000 residents.
The change in the three-day average of hospitalized patients went from -6.5% to -7.5%, which is much lower than the state's threshold.
The state's mandate to close in-restaurant dining and bars and require face coverings in public have helped, Bartlett said. More restaurants are opening up "pop-up" tents and outdoor "parklets" to feed the masses who long for a return to normalcy.
"When the governor came out with the state mandate for face coverings and the counties were required to follow through, I believe that could have potentially had a positive effect," Bartlett said. "But it's a combination of things—people getting better at social distancing and we've kept very steady to no mass gatherings."
The county reported that 484,803 COVID-19 tests have been conducted among the county's 3.2 million residents, including 10,659 reported Monday. It is not clear if some of those tests were multiple tests on the same people.
There have been 30,657 documented recoveries.
Of the county's total death toll, 284 were skilled nursing facility residents, 38 were assisted living facility residents and one was homeless.
Since the pandemic began, there have been 382 children up to age 3 who have been infected; 500 in the 4-to-9-year-old age group; 383 from 10 to 12 years old; 365 among 13- to 14-year-olds; and 1,332 in the 15- to 18-year-old age group.
Many elementary schools are preparing applications for waivers from the county and state that would allow for in-person classroom teaching up to the sixth-grade level. The state has mandated that schools in counties on the watch list must employ distance learning until they get off the watch list.
About 80 Orange County schools, most of them charter and private schools, have expressed interest in obtaining waivers, Chau told reporters on Friday afternoon.
He also said discussion has perked up among educators and state and county officials regarding holding classes outdoors.
Full coronavirus coverage: Coronavirus In California: What To Know
City News Service, Patch Editor Ashley Ludwig contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on the Orange County Patch
