The county reported 658 new coronavirus infections on Tuesday and recorded an additional 40 deaths, bringing the cumulative number of cases to 243,163 and the number of deaths to 3,617. These figures reflect two days since there was no update on Monday for the President’s Day holiday.
Hospitalizations, in turn, continued in a downward trend, with 748 patients being treated for the virus at medical centers in the area, up from 790 on Sunday, with the number in intensive care falling from 257 to 235.
The municipality has 15.3% of the ICU beds available, as well as 56% of the ventilators, according to the Orange County Health Care Agency.
“We haven’t seen a peak in the Super Bowl so far, so that’s good news,” Orange County CEO Frank Kim told the City News Service.
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Of the 40 deaths reported on Tuesday, two were qualified nursing residents and five were residents of living institutions, bringing these totals to 902 and 406, respectively.
Death reports are staggered because they come from various sources and are not always recorded immediately.
The death toll in January is now 1,040, surpassing the previous record in December, with 859 deaths recorded that month. This means that 52% of the county’s death toll since the first fatality on March 19, 2020, occurred during those two months.
The death toll in February is 26 so far.
The deadliest pandemic day in Orange County was January 5, when 63 people died. The second largest was on January 3, when 61 people died.
The county’s adjusted daily case rate per 100,000 people dropped from 29.7 last week to 20.7 on Tuesday, and the test positivity rate on an average of seven days, with a seven-day lag, dropped from 9.4% to 7.8%, which meets the criteria for the red layer.
The county health equity quartile positivity rate, which measures cases in the poorest and most affected parts of the county, fell from 12.4% last week to 10.7%.
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The numbers for the state’s color-coded level structure are updated on Tuesdays.
To move from the purple layer to the less restrictive red layer, the county needs to improve to 4 to 7 new daily cases per 100,000 and a positivity rate of 5% to 8% with a health equity quartile of 5.3% to 8 %. And the county would be required to maintain metrics for two consecutive weeks.
Orange County Council of Supervisors Chairman Andrew Do said that if trends continue, the “best case” is another three to four weeks before the county reaches the red level.
At that time, from mid to late March, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine could be available, said Do.
“At that point, we could really make progress in reopening our economy,” he said.
Kim said the county had “one foot in the red layer and the other firmly planted in purple.”
The county will open a new vaccine distribution site at Santa Ana College in Santa Ana on Wednesday. The county plans to distribute about 1,000 vaccines per day, and up to 1,500 at the end of the day, said Do.
Orange County has reached the state limit to reopen schools from kindergarten through sixth grade, but most schools in the county have already been opened for some kind of combination of virtual and direct learning.
The Anaheim Elementary School District plans to resume face-to-face learning on March 15. The Buena Park School District is starting face-to-face education on February 22.
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