Orange County’s COVID-19 reported case rates, hospitalizations and deaths continued to trend downward Monday as the county moves closer to being able to relax restrictions under the state’s tiered system for reopening.
The county on Monday reported 163 more coronavirus cases, raising the cumulative to 247,914.
Hospitalizations continued to decline with 288 COVID-19 patients, down from 296 on Sunday, and 84 in intensive care, a decline from 89 on Sunday.
The county also logged 26 more fatalities, upping the death toll to 4,252. Of those deaths logged on Monday, three were skilled nursing facility residents and two were assisted living facility residents, raising the death toll among those groups to 999 and 475 respectively.
Orange County officials expect to be notified Monday evening if they will be able to graduate from the most restrictive purple tier to the red tier next week.
“We hope that is not going to be changed by one these variants in the virus coming along,” said Orange County Supervisor Doug Chaffee. “There could be a surge. It’s not time to let your guard down, but at the same time you can feel good about the new numbers.”
January was the deadliest month in the pandemic with 1,340 fatalities. The death toll for December was 895, and 316 fatalities were logged in February. The December and January death toll, which reflects the holiday surge of cases, represents 52.5% of the entire death toll during the pandemic.
The county has 33.9% of its intensive care unit beds and 68% of its ventilators available.
The county also reported 5,709 tests Monday, raising the cumulative total to 3,119,356.
The county reopened its Disneyland mega vaccination site on Monday after spending the last few days reconfiguring it as a Point of Distribution, or POD, for the disabled. Now Disneyland will inoculate the disabled and the Anaheim Convention Center will be available for indoor service.
“We’ve had issues with the Disney site because of bad weather, winds, rain, so that is being converted to drive-through,” Chaffee said. “But we continue to also do the mobile PODS.”
Orange County officials are expecting to receive the new Johnson & Johnson vaccines by this week.
The numbers governing the state’s tiered network for reopening the economy are updated every Tuesday, with purple being the most restrictive, red the next one up and then orange and the least-restrictive yellow. But those reports reflect numbers through Sunday, and as of that day, Orange County did not meet the criteria for the red tier.
The county’s test positivity rate improved to 3.9% from 5.4% last Tuesday, and the adjusted case rate per 100,000 on a seven-day average with a seven-day lag improved from 11.9 to 7.6.
To get to the red tier, the county has to have a case rate per 100,000 population of 4 to 7, a positivity rate of 5% to 8% and a Health Equity Quartile rate of 5.3% to 8%.
The red tier allows for many more businesses and organizations to reopen. For instance, retail stores could allow for half capacity instead of 25%, and museums, zoos and aquariums could reopen for indoor activities at 25% capacity, as could movie theaters, gyms and restaurants.
Outbreaks — defined as two or more confirmed cases within the past two weeks — have declined significantly in the county’s nursing homes, with just two skilled nursing facilities and three elderly assisted living facilities in that metric as of Wednesday.
The county must hang on to its case rates and positivity rates through next Sunday to graduate to the red tier. County officials are still targeting March 17 as the date it would be able to reopen more businesses.