The province on Tuesday reported 658 new coronavirus infections and recorded another 40 deaths, raising the cumulative case number to 243,163 and the death toll to 3,617. These numbers reflect two days, as there was no update on Monday for the Presidential Day holiday.
Hospitalizations, meanwhile, continued a downward trend, with 748 patients treated in the area’s medical centers for the virus, from 790 on Sunday, with the number of intensive care units falling from 257 to 235.
According to the Orange County Health Care Agency, 15.3% of its ICU beds are available, as well as 56% of its fans.
“We haven’t seen any nails from the Super Bowl so far, so that’s good news,” Orange County CEO Frank Kim told City News Service.
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Of the forty deaths reported Tuesday, two were residents of competent nursing homes and five residents were paramedics, rising to 902 and 406 respectively.
The mortality reports are overwhelming because they come from different sources and are not always recorded immediately.
The death toll for January now stands at 1,040, surpassing the previous record for December, with 859 deaths for that month. This means that 52% of the country’s death rate since the first death rate occurred on 19 March 2020 during the two months.
The death toll for February so far is 26.
The deadliest day of the Orange County pandemic was Jan. 5, when 63 people were killed. The second highest was January 3, when 61 people died.
The adjusted daily fall rate per 100,000 people in the country dropped from 29.7 last week to 20.7 on Tuesday, and the test positivity rate on an average of seven days, with a lag of seven days, fell from 9.4 % to 7.8%, which meets the criteria for the red level.
The province’s health share quartile positivity rate, which measures the cases in severely affected, needy parts of the country, fell from 12.4% last week to 10.7%.
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The numbers for the state’s color coding framework are updated on Tuesdays.
To move to the less restrictive red level of the purple level, the country needs to improve to 4 to 7 new daily cases per 100,000 and a positive percentage of 5% to 8% with a quartile for health equity at 5.3% to 8%. The country will be expected to maintain the statistics for two consecutive weeks.
Orange County Chairman Andrew Do said if the trends continue, the ‘best case’ is another three to four weeks before the province makes the red level.
By that time, mid to late March, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine may be available, Do said.
“At that point, we could really be reopening our economy,” he said.
Kim said the land ‘was planted one foot in the red plane and another firmly in purple’.
The province will open a new vaccine distribution website at Santa Ana College in Santa Ana on Wednesday. The province plans to hand out about 1,000 vaccinations daily, and eventually up to 1,500, Do said.
Orange County has reached the state’s threshold of reopening kindergartens through sixth grades, but most schools in the country were already open to some sort of combination of virtual and direct learning.
Anaheim Elementary School, Anaheim District, plans to resume on March 15. The Buena Park School District is introducing personal tutoring to begin on February 22nd.
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