Orange County’s hospitalizations for COVID-19, which dropped below 200 on Wednesday following the holiday-fueled surge, ticked back up again Thursday, although the county’s ICU numbers fell again.
Hospitalizations dropped from 216 on Tuesday to 199 Wednesday, but were back up to 213 on Thursday. Intensive care unit patients with the coronavirus dropped from 54 Wednesday to 49 on Thursday.
Andrew Noymer, a UC Irvine professor of population health and disease prevention, said the one-day increase is “just a bit of noise” and likely insignificant, though he stressed that hospitalization rates are the key metric for the public to watch for.
“As cases fall and testing goes up the case rates can be deceptively misleading,” Noymer said. “The hospitalizations is what you really want to look for… and they’re going in the right direction.”
Noymer pointed out that the intensive care unit numbers in the county haven’t been below 50 in months.
“The number one predictor of deaths is people in the ICU — like a few weeks prior,” Noymer said.
And even if someone who gets vaccinated gets infected the impact will be substantially lessened, he added.
“Some of these vaccines may fail, but they may just fail at the level that people still get sick, but not as severely,” Noymer said. “Imagine if Billy Joe gets sick and he thinks `How is this possible, I got vaccinated?’ … but he doesn’t feel that bad and stays at home and toughs it out. That same infection in December would have meant a trip to the hospital.”
The case rate in the county as of Wednesday was 3.8 per 100,000 residents. But that does not automatically propel the county into the orange tier of the state’s economic re-opening system. That will not happen until April 7 at the earliest if the current trends continue.
Orange County CEO Frank Kim said it could come sooner if the state authorizes it, as it did when officials moved up the county’s graduation into the red tier on Sunday instead of Wednesday.
On Thursday, the Orange County Health Care Agency reported 114 new COVID-19 cases, upping the cumulative total to 249,181.
The county also logged 11 more fatalities. That boosted the death toll for February to 467. Deaths are often reported weeks after they occur. The death toll for January, the deadliest month of the pandemic, stands at 1,412. So far in March the death toll is at 32. Ten of the fatalities reported on Thursday happened this month.
The latest weekly update from the state, issued on Tuesdays, shows the county’s test positivity rate improved to 2.2% from 3.2% from last Tuesday, and the adjusted case rate per 100,000 people on a seven-day average with a seven-day lag improved from 6 to 4.
The county’s Health Equity Quartile rate, which measures positivity in hotspots in disadvantaged communities, improved from 4.1% last week to 3.5%.
That puts the county just one-tenth of a point away from meeting the threshold for the orange tier for case rate. If the trend continues, the county could move up to the orange tier by April 7, three days after Easter.
Kim said earlier this week that he was a “little nervous” about another surge such as the one being reported in Europe.
“The goal is to get these vaccines done and that’s it,” Kim said.
Lines are appearing at some local pharmacies as vaccines are ramped up at drug store chains. County staff has estimated that the big drug store chains are vaccinating about 100 people a day in each location, Kim said.
State officials have indicated the county will continue to receive its usual allocation of vaccine doses. The county has inoculated about 1 million people, a little less than one-third of its population.
Orange County on Sunday went from the purple tier to the less-restrictive red tier of the state’s coronavirus regulatory system, allowing for bigger crowds in retail stores and the reopening of museums, movie theaters and indoor dining at restaurants at limited capacity.
Bowers Museum in Santa Ana reopened Wednesday. The museum has extended its Disney exhibition and will offer visitors discounts to celebrate the reopening.
The county had been preparing to move from the most-restrictive purple tier to the red tier by Wednesday, but the timetable was moved up Sunday when the state met its goal of inoculating 2 million Californians in underprivileged communities where coronavirus has spread more widely.
The red tier allows for many more businesses and organizations to reopen. For instance, retail stores can allow for half capacity instead of 25%, and museums, zoos and aquariums can reopen for indoor activities at 25% capacity, as can movie theaters, gyms and restaurants.
Wineries, breweries and distilleries can reopen for outdoor business only.
The county on Thursday also reported 11,880 COVID-19 tests, raising the cumulative total to 3,213,470.
The county is doing 312.9 tests per 100,000 on a seven-day average with a seven-day lag.
“We’re still in the low 300s, and the reality is we’re where the rest of the state of California has dropped to,” Kim said.
“So now we’re having discussions about how to modify our testing program to encourage greater numbers of people with symptoms to come out and test. We have to find a way to make it even easier, because the demand isn’t there anymore.”