In 
Spencer Custodio |
Orange County, along with Southern California, will remain under the regional order to shut down the coronavirus because hospitalizations in the area continue to skyrocket, making beds in the intensive care unit scarce in places like Los Angeles County.
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“The order will remain because these projections do not show that San Joaquin Valley and Southern California had not designed an ICU capacity above 15% four weeks earlier,” said the secretary of the state Health and Human Services Agency, Dr. Mark Ghaly, at a press conference on Tuesday.
The region’s ICU beds for coronavirus patients are exhausted, he said.
It doesn’t look like the situation is going to improve anytime soon.
“Basically, we are projecting that ICU capacity is not improving in Southern California,” said Ghaly. “And that demand will continue to exceed capacity.”
OC hospitals continue to suffer.
As of Tuesday, 2,106 people have been hospitalized, including 473 in intensive care units.
The county is seeing its number of hospitalizations skyrocket at rates never seen before – all before a dreaded vacation spike, similar to what was seen after Thanksgiving.
A month ago, 648 people were hospitalized, 158 in ICUs – an increase of 225%.
“We hope it will continue to get worse, until the vaccine is released frankly and until people really take masking and avoid behavior seriously,” said Dr. Shruti Gohil, an infectious doctor who treats patients in the intensive care unit at UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange.
Gohil said that winter allows the virus to spread more easily because the aerosol particles in people where the virus travels do not dissipate as fast as during the summer months.
“This is the natural and true time for this to spread. So it’s the perfect storm. We are arriving with all this COVID, now the temperatures have dropped, ”said Gohil in a telephone interview on Monday. “I see it getting worse and worse until something happens.”
She said that a mass rollout of the vaccine, along with more people following public health guidelines, could turn the tide.
“This is not rocket science,” said Gohil. “The answers are clear.”
Although the region is under the regional shutdown order for a month, many bars and restaurants remained open, as the OC sees thousands of new cases of coronavirus every day.
Orange County public health officials and the OC Sheriff took a direct approach to enforcement.
The order closed non-essential businesses, such as nail salons, barber shops, gyms and outdoor restaurants. Although restaurants can deliver and deliver, similar to the previous request to stay at home in March.
But, unlike the March order, malls and other retailers remain open. Although malls and retailers are expected to limit the number of people to 20% of the building’s capacity, many stores are not doing so.
Local and state public health officials attributed most of the peak cases to private meetings.
But an analysis of the LA Times From outbreak data released daily by LA county officials, they found that there were 505 active outbreaks at retailers last week – more than double the previous month.
Orange County public health officials refuse to publicly release the county outbreak data.
UC Irvine epidemiologist Sanghyuk Shin said public health departments across the country did not have enough resources to accurately contact cases of the trace virus to find out where many outbreaks began.
“I don’t think we’ve seen super-large data on the distribution of COVID 19 spread out here in the United States,” said Shin in a telephone interview on Monday. “So tracking contacts and investigating these clusters that occur, that can occur in a mall, in schools, at meetings – is a lot of work.”
Shin said that there are so many cases that are not investigated that much of the current data does not show the full picture.
“I know people are aiming for family reunions and things like that. I am a little skeptical about this because the types of data presented are being based only on 10%, 20% of COVID-19 cases that are fully investigated. In the vast majority of COVID-19 cases, we don’t know where people got it from, ”he said.
He also said that holiday parties and other private events are easier to investigate because people know each other, rather than trying to find out who was exposed to an infected person in a crowded store.
Shin, other epidemiologists, public health experts and doctors interviewed by Voice of OC during the pandemic said that masks, social distance, outdoor activities and strict hygiene routines add different layers of protection.
But with the virus so widespread, these different layers have become less effective – especially as people flock to shopping malls, restaurants and elsewhere.
The virus has already killed 1,847 people out of 152,059 confirmed cases, including 2,452 new cases registered on Tuesday, according to the county health agency.
State public health officials estimate that about 12% of all new cases end in hospitals in three weeks.
Orange County received an average of about 3,000 new cases a day last week.
Given that experts say that about 12% b of cases end up requiring hospitalization, that means more than 2,500 more people may be hospitalized in the coming weeks, as hospitals are trying to discharge stabilized patients as quickly as possible.
The virus has killed more than three times as many people as the flu on an annual average.
For contextual purposes, Orange County has averaged about 20,000 deaths per year since 2016, including 543 annual flu deaths, according to state health data.
According to these state mortality statistics, cancer kills more than 4,600 people, heart disease kills more than 2,800, more than 1,400 die from Alzheimer’s disease and strokes kill more than 1,300 people.
Orange County has already exceeded the annual average of 20,000 deaths, with 21,110 deaths by November, according to the latest status data available.
It is a difficult virus to be fought by the medical community because some people have no symptoms, but they can still spread it. Others experience mild symptoms, such as fatigue and moderate fever. Others end up in the ICU for days and weeks before escaping, while others die from the virus.
“We certainly know that Southern California hospitals are in crisis,” said Ghaly.
He said that some hospitals in the region are using some “crisis treatment” techniques, which is when a hospital is so narrow that doctors may have to prioritize who is treated first. The crisis mode can also mean delays in the care of some patients and increased waiting times for ambulances.
Although no Southern California hospital is in “crisis care” mode, Ghaly said he and other public health officials fear that hospitals may have to ration treatment and supplies if the trend continues.
“You are in situations where you occasionally need to ration supplies, care … not all patients receive the same level of care as we expected,” said Ghaly, urging people to “do everything in our power today to prevent us from entering this situation.”
Here is the latest information on virus numbers in Orange County from county data:
Infections | Hospitalizations and deaths | City to city data | Demography
Spencer Custodio is a reporter on the Voice of OC team. You can reach it at [email protected] Follow him on Twitter @SpencerCustodio