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Health Nov 03, 2022
| Photo courtesy of geralt/Pixabay
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As Orange County’s children’s hospitals fill up with influenza and RSV patients, leading to an emergency declaration this week, the county’s COVID-19 metrics remained relatively stable, according to data released Thursday by the Orange County Health Care Agency.
The county reported that hospitalizations went from 103 patients with COVID-19 last Thursday to 113 on Wednesday, according to the Orange County Health Care Agency. The number of intensive care unit patients went from 18 to 16.
The county has 25.7% of its intensive care unit beds available. Officials grow concerned when that percentage drops below 20%.
Of those hospitalized, 68.4% are incompletely vaccinated or unvaccinated and 69.2% of the COVID-19 patients in intensive care units are incompletely vaccinated or unvaccinated.
The county logged 1,293 cases for the week, increasing the cumulative case count to 674,462.
The county’s test positivity rate went from 5.3% to 5%, with the statistic going from 4.7% to 4.4% in the health equity quartile, which measures the communities hardest hit by the pandemic. The daily case rate per 100,000 went from 4.7 to 4.8 on a seven-day average with a seven-day lag, and remained at 4.9 in the adjusted daily case rate per 100,000 on a seven-day average with a seven-day lag.
The county logged 23 more fatalities, boosting the cumulative death toll to 7,541. Thirteen of the fatalities happened last month, increasing the death toll for October to 43. Five fatalities occurred in September, raising that month’s death toll to 73 Four fatalities occurred in August, hiking that month’s death toll to 108. And one was in June, raising that month’s death toll to 58.
The positivity rate for those fully vaccinated with a booster went from 5.9 on Oct. 23 to 5.3 on Oct. 30, according to the latest data available. For those vaccinated with no booster the rate went from 2.9 to 3.1. For those not vaccinated the rate went from 6 to 6.3.
The number of residents fully vaccinated went from 2,357,219 to 2,358,358. The number of residents who have received at least one dose is 214,295. The number of booster shots administered increased from 1,402,418 to 1,406,926.
The number of children up to 4 years old, who have received at least one dose is 15,464 with 8,187 fully vaccinated. Just 4.4% of the county’s population in the age group is fully vaccinated.
For 5- to 11-year-old children, 97,012 are fully vaccinated, about 36.6% of the age group. In the 12-to-17 age group, 69.8% are fully vaccinated.
