Health & Fitness
OC Child Under 5-Years-Old Dies From COVID-Related Complications
This takes place a year after COVID-related complications took the life of a teenage girl in Orange County.
ORANGE COUNTY, CA — A year after the first juvenile fatality of COVID- 19, another child has succumbed to complications from coronavirus, officials confirmed Friday, but this youth was under 5 years old.
Officials did not disclose the age or gender of the child, but said the youth was under 5 and had underlying health conditions.
Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley, who has worked to raise awareness of the highly contagious Delta variant's impact on children in the county, said she was told the child had preexisting conditions from birth and was infected by an adult.
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"It's just heartbreaking," Foley told City News Service. "But really the only way out of this pandemic -- and you've heard me say this a thousand times -- is to get vaccinated."
Dr. Clayton Chau, the county's chief health officer and director of the Orange County Health Care Agency, issued a statement saying, "My heart goes out to this family who has lost a precious young life. This is an urgent reminder that we must do everything we can to protect our little ones, the children and infants in our community who are not yet eligible for a vaccination."
Find out what's happening in Orange Countyfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
The county logged four more fatalities on Friday, all of which occurred in August. The death toll for August now stands at 110, much higher than July's 20 fatalities.
The county's other juvenile COVID-19 fatality occurred last August. The victim was a teenage girl with significant underlying medical conditions.
Eight residents 18 to 24 years old have succumbed to COVID-19, and 64 fall in the 25 to 34 age range.
The four fatalities logged Friday raised the overall death toll to 5,299.
There have been no deaths reported for September yet.
The death toll for June was just 17, 23 in May, 45 in April, 199 in March, 615 in February, 1,578 in January -- the deadliest month of the pandemic -- and 975 in December, the next deadliest.
Hospitalizations for the virus continued a downward trend Friday.
The COVID-19 patient count dropped from 432 Thursday to 426, with the number of patients in intensive care dipping from 132 to 130.
The county has 21.8% of its ICU beds and 64% of its ventilators available.
