The province reported 658 new coronavirus infections on Tuesday and recorded an additional 40 fatalities, bringing the cumulative number of cases to 243,163 and the death toll to 3,617. Those numbers reflect two days since there was no update Monday for Presidents’ holiday.
Hospital admissions, meanwhile, continue a downward trend, with 748 patients treated for the virus at nearby medical centers, up from 790 on Sunday, with the number in intensive care dropping from 257 to 235.
According to the Orange County Health Care Agency, the county has 15.3% of the ICU beds available, as well as 56% of the fans.
“We haven’t seen any peaks from the Super Bowl so far, so that’s good news,” Frank Kim, Orange County CEO, told City News Service.
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Of the 40 deaths reported Tuesday, two were skilled nursing home residents and five residential care home residents, bringing those totals to 902 and 406 respectively.
The death reports are staggered because they come from different sources and are not always immediately logged.
The death toll for January now stands at 1,040, more than the previous December record, with 859 deaths recorded for that month. That means that 52% of the county’s death toll since the first fatal accident on March 19, 2020 occurred during those two months.
The death toll for February so far is 26.
The deadliest day of the Orange County pandemic was January 5, when 63 people died. The second highest was January 3, when 61 people died.
The county’s adjusted daily number of cases per 100,000 people fell from 29.7 last week to 20.7 on Tuesday, and the test positivity rate on a seven-day mean, with a seven-day delay, fell from 9.4% to 7.8 %, which meets the criteria. for the red layer.
The county’s Health Equity Quartile Positivity Rate, which measures cases in the hard-hit, more needy 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 tier framework will be updated on Tuesday.
To move from the purple layer to the less restrictive red layer, the province must improve to 4 to 7 new daily cases per 100,000 and a positivity rate of 5% to 8% with a health equality quartile of 5.3% to 8%. And the county should keep the statistics for two consecutive weeks.
Andrew Do, chairman of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, said that if trends continue, the best case scenario will take another three to four weeks for the county to hit the red level.
By then, in mid to late March, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine could be available, Do said.
“At that point, we could really make progress in reopening our economy,” he said.
Kim said the county has “one foot in the red coat and another planted firmly in the purple.”
The county will open a new vaccine distribution site at Santa Ana College in Santa Ana on Wednesday. The county aims to deliver about 1,000 vaccines daily, and up to 1,500 eventually, Do.
Orange County has passed the state’s threshold to reopen kindergartens through sixth grade, but most schools in the county are already open to some sort of combination of virtual and direct learning.
Anaheim Elementary School District has plans to resume personal learning on March 15. Buena Park School District is gradually introducing personal instruction to begin February 22.
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