Hospitalizations Rise As Orange County Remains Stuck In Red Tier
ORANGE COUNTY, CA — Orange County is situated firmly in the red tier of Gov. Gavin Newsom's blueprint for a safer economy in California. The four-tiered system has much of norcal reaching Orange tiers, while a broad swath of southern California remains steeped in red and purple, due to a big bump in hospitalizations.
Here in Orange County on Thursday 271 new coronavirus diagnoses and seven additional coronavirus-related fatalities were reported, raising the cumulative case count to 61,112 and the death toll to 1,494. Four of the people who died lived in skilled-nursing facilities.
Though hospitalizations are up, the rate of deaths has been trending down over the past few weeks. From Oct. 25 through last Saturday, there were 39 deaths reported, up from 35 the week before, but lower than 69 the previous week. Since Sunday, nine deaths have been reported.
The number of hospitalizations related to the virus went from 177 Tuesday to 182 Wednesday, with the number of intensive care unit patients jumping up from 60 to 78, according to the Orange County Health Care Agency.
The change in the three-day average of hospitalized patients went from -1.8% to -1.6%. The county has 32% of its intensive care unit beds and 65% of its ventilators available.
According to OCHCA data, 1,138,558 COVID-19 tests have been conducted since the start of the pandemic, including 7,261 reported Wednesday.
There have been 54,170 estimated recoveries.
The county's positivity rate, which is reported each Tuesday, but was reported Wednesday this week because of the election, rose from 3.2% to 3.6%, and the daily case rate per 100,000 population increased from 5.1 last week to 6.
The county's Health Equity Quartile Positivity Rate, which measures a county's response to hot spots, decreased from 6% to 5.7%. The county has to reach at least 5.2% in that metric to move into the orange tier from the red tier in the state's coronavirus monitoring system.
Officials have said the daily average of new cases would have to come down to about 130 for Orange County to make the orange tier, allowing for more businesses to reopen and for some already open to increase their capacity. However, if cases rise too much, the county could slip back into the most- restrictive purple tier.
Orange County's unadjusted rate per 100,000 is at 6.1, but the volume of testing brought it down to 6, said Orange County CEO Frank Kim.
Though case rates are still high, Kim says that it's not a cause of concern. "It looks really good compared to our neighbors," he said.
Kim noted that case rates were rising because of infections among university students.
"For us, we're not seeing that trend. It's not in our schools," Kim said.
There was a relatively small outbreak at Chapman University, but "we're not seeing a huge number" among higher education students in the county, Kim said.
"We're hanging on to red, so we're happy about that, but we're seeing a slow rise in case rates when we look at what's happening with our peers," Kim said. "We know our residents and their residents come and go between the counties and it's obviously a communicable disease so we're concerned about our peers."
Dr. Clayton Chau, director of the OCHCA and the county's chief health officer, told the Orange County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday that he expects the case rate per 100,000 would likely be in the "high 5 to 6" range, which will keep the county within the red tier. The county cannot exceed 7, Chau said.
"For the month of October it's been 4.5 to about 5 or so," he said. "Since Oct. 29, the number has gone up quite a bit... We've seen cases going up statewide. Our colleagues in San Diego are on the edge of red and purple."
The county remains within the orange tier for the positivity rate, Chau said.
A by-city case count in Orange County is as follows as of Wednesday:
Aliso Viejo - 437 Total Cases
Anaheim - 10411 Total Cases
Brea - 596 Total Cases
Buena Park - 1750 Total Cases
Costa Mesa - 2074 Total Cases
Coto de Caza - 54 Total Cases
Cypress - 623 Total Cases
Dana Point - 318 Total Cases
Fountain Valley - 589 Total Cases
Fullerton - 2943 Total Cases
Garden Grove - 3339 Total Cases
Huntington Beach - 2669 Total Cases
Irvine - 1968 Total Cases
La Habra - 1669 Total Cases
La Palma - 175 Total Cases
Ladera Ranch - 196 Total Cases
Laguna Beach - 257 Total Cases
Laguna Hills - 358 Total Cases
Laguna Niguel - 526 Total Cases
Laguna Woods - 77 Total Cases
Lake Forest - 950 Total Cases
Los Alamitos - 232 Total Cases
Midway City - 140 Total Cases
Mission Viejo - 982 Total Cases
Newport Beach - 1262 Total Cases
Orange - 2808 Total Cases
Placentia - 1079 Total Cases
Rancho Mission Viejo - 79 Total Cases
Rancho Santa Margarita - 402 Total Cases
Rossmoor - 71 Total Cases
San Clemente - 629 Total Cases
San Juan Capistrano - 661 Total Cases
Santa Ana - 11710 Total Cases
Seal Beach - 313 Total Cases
Silverado - 43 Total Cases
Stanton - 732 Total Cases
Trabuco Canyon - 224 Total Cases
Tustin - 1493 Total Cases
Villa Park - 66 Total Cases
Westminster - 1198 Total Cases
Yorba Linda - 857 Total Cases
"We are encouraging our community to, number one, if they're sick they need to stay home," Chau said. "We encourage people to get their regular flu vaccine and because the weather is getting colder, a lot of activity will move indoors, so we encourage people to be really careful and follow (public health guidelines)."
As for the county's schools, the reopening is working, according to Chau.
No outbreaks in the county's schools since they have reopened, he says, "so you will see some of the school districts will reopen for in-person education throughout the month of November, December into January."
Family gatherings during the upcoming holidays is "my source of anxiety now," Chau said, adding, "just folks gathering, getting fatigue about all the (social distancing) behavior they need to do. It's not just happening in California, but it's happening elsewhere in the U.S., as well as worldwide. Several countries in Europe have entered lockdown for a month."
This article originally appeared on the Orange County Patch
