Health & Fitness
COVID Hospitalizations And Cases Continue To Dip In Orange County
Deaths related to COVID-19 continue to climb in Orange County despite a decline in cases and hospitalizations.
SANTA ANA, CA — Orange County's COVID-19 hospitalizations and case rates continued a sharp decline Tuesday, but reports of fatalities continued to flow in, with January reaching a death toll not seen since October.
The number of COVID-positive hospital patients in the county dropped from 934 to 872, with the number of intensive care unit patients dropping from 174 to 164, according to the latest state figures.
OC has 19% of its ICU beds available, according to the Orange County Health Care Agency. Local health officials get concerned when the level falls below 20%. The county has 59% of its ventilators available.
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Of those hospitalized, 85% are unvaccinated and 87% in ICU are not inoculated, the OCHCA said.
Saturday marked the first day since Jan. 9 that hospitalizations fell below 1,000. The downward trend began on Jan. 18.
Find out what's happening in Orange Countyfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
The county reported 10 more COVID-related fatalities Tuesday, hiking the cumulative death toll to 6,110 since the pandemic began. All the deaths logged Tuesday occurred in January, raising last month's death toll to 138. The most recent recorded fatalities occurred on Jan. 24 when two people died of virus-related causes.
December's death toll stands at 101, with 111 in November and 134 in October.
September's death toll stands at 197, and August's death toll is 182.
In contrast, the death toll before the Delta variant fueled a late-summer surge was 31 in July, 19 in June, 26 in May, 47 in April, 202 in March and 620 for February. January 2021 remains the deadliest month of the pandemic, with a death toll of 1,598, ahead of December 2020, the next-deadliest with 985 people lost to the virus.
One of the dead reported Tuesday was a skilled nursing facility resident, raising the overall toll in that category to 1,237. The death toll for assisted living facility residents is 651.
The OCHCA also reported 1,229 new positive COVID tests Tuesday, bringing the county's cumulative total to 518,638.
Outbreaks — defined as three or more infected residents — decreased from 45 to 38 at assisted living facilities from Jan. 26 to Jan. 31, the most recent data available, and remained at 30 for skilled nursing facilities.
City News Service
