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Orange County’s COVID-19 hospitalizations and positivity rates continue to trend down even as the death toll for this month increased by 18, according to data released Thursday by the Orange County Health Care Agency.
The death toll for September increased from one last week to 19 logged so far. The death toll for August climbed by six to 103. Two fatalities logged this week occurred in July, increasing that month’s death toll to 125 and one occurred in June, hiking up that month’s death toll to 57.
The County, which provides updates on data on Thursdays, now reports a cumulative COVID death toll of 7,432.
Hospitalizations have decreased from 145 on Friday to 124 on Wednesday, with the number of intensive care unit patients remaining at 21. The County has 27.1% of its ICU beds available. Officials grow concerned that percentage drops below 20%.
Of those hospitalized 68.8% are incompletely or unvaccinated and 69.4% are similarly situated in ICU.
The County logged 1,824 cases, increasing the cumulative case count to 666,185.
The County’s test positivity rate decreased from 8.5% last week to 7.1%, with the statistic declining from 8.1% to 7.6% in the health equity quartile, which measures the communities hardest hit by the pandemic. The daily case rate per 100,000 dropped from 9.4 to 8.9 on seven-day average with seven-day lag, and from 10.2 to 8.3 in the adjusted daily case rate per 100,000 on a seven-day average with a seven-day lag.
The positivity rate for those fully vaccinated with a booster dropped from 18.4 on Aug. 21 to 15 on Aug. 28, according to the latest data available. For those vaccinated with no booster the rate dropped from 11.5 to 9.3. For those not vaccinated the rate decreased from 22 to 18.2
The number of residents fully vaccinated increased from 2,348,277 last week to 2,358,465 this week, according to the OCHCA. The number of residents who have received at least one dose was at 206,795. The number of booster shots administered rose from 1,377,809 to 1,378,761.
The number of children up to 4 years old, who have received at least one dose stands at 13,333 with 4,792 fully vaccinated, which represents just 7% of the County’s population in the age group.
For 5- to 11-year-old children, 96,370 are fully vaccinated, about 41% in that age group. In the 12-to-17 age group, 76% are fully vaccinated.
