Over the course of just a week, Orange County added nearly 300 deaths from the coronavirus.
The OC Health Care Agency’s daily tracker listed 43 new deaths on Saturday, January 16, for a total of 2,320 COVID-related deaths. The previous day, Friday, the county reported a record 82 deaths in one day.
However, offering some hope that new infections may be stabilizing for the time being, Orange County registered more than 700 new cases of coronavirus less on Saturday than in the previous week – down from 4,204 to 3,454.
The reported deaths do not represent the actual sum of a given day. County data is either compiled from death certificates or collected during case investigations, so deaths may have occurred days or weeks earlier.
Three of the deaths reported on Saturday were residents of qualified wards and two were residents of home care facilities.
Since screening began, the county has seen 209,365 cases of coronavirus in all.
While the vast majority of people who test positive have milder symptoms, 542 patients with coronavirus were in intensive care units on Saturday – five less than the daily record of 547 last Sunday.
With the increase in cases after Thanksgiving and after the Christmas holidays, hospitals have been struggling to meet the dramatic increase in demand – adding temporary units in parking lots to accommodate extra beds.
Overworked medical staff are working longer shifts and taking care of more patients than normal protocol would allow.
Hospitals and funeral homes have used trailers with freezers to store the surplus bodies.
The availability of ICU beds adjusted by the state of the municipality remains at zero, although this does not mean that all ICU beds are occupied.
The California Department of Public Health ‘takes the actual percentage of adult ICU beds remaining each day and adjusts it to reflect the unbalanced share of COVID-19 patients in intensive care compared to others who also need these beds for treatment that saves lives.
Bed availability in the unadjusted ICU for Southern California was reported at 8.9% on Saturday.