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Orange County’s COVID-19 hospitalizations saw steep reductions this week, according to data released Thursday by the Orange County Health Care Agency.
Hospitalizations of COVID-19-infected patients had been going up and down since a steady rise ended on Dec. 7. But now the hospitalizations are in a steady decline.
There were 219 infected patients hospitalized as of last Thursday, but that number dropped to 178 as of Wednesday. The number of intensive care unit patients went from 30 as of last Thursday to 28.
The agency logged 26 more fatalities, increasing the death toll to 7,791. A dozen of the fatalities occurred this month, increasing January’s death toll to 17.
Six of the fatalities occurred in December, raising its death toll to 120. Another two happened in November, increasing its death toll to 53.
December is the first month with triple-digit deaths since the summer wave. On two of the dates, 10 people died, marking the first time there were days of double-digit deaths since February.
Of those hospitalized in the county, 63% are unvaccinated or partly vaccinated. The ICU patients are 64.1% partly or unvaccinated.
The number of residents fully vaccinated increased from 2,365,038 to 2,365,942. The number of residents who have received at least one dose is 225,350 The number of booster shots administered increased from 1,443,362 to 1,445,113.
The number of children up to 4 years old who have received at least one dose inched up from 18,087 to 18,284, with 11,293 fully vaccinated. Just 6% of the county’s population in the age group is fully vaccinated.
For 5- to 11-year-old children, 97,314 are fully vaccinated, about 36.7% of the age group. In the 12-to-17 age group, 69.6% are fully vaccinated.
The test positivity rate went from 10.4% last week to 7.5% and decreased from 10.7% to 7.4% in the health equity quartile, which measures the communities hardest hit by the pandemic.
The daily case rate per 100,000 went from 10.3 to 6.2 on a seven-day average with a seven-day lag, and went from 10.1 to 6.6 in the adjusted daily case rate per 100,000 on a seven-day average with a seven-day lag.
The OCHCA reports COVID data every Thursday.
The county logged 1,223 new cases of COVID-19, hiking the cumulative to 705,608.
The positivity rate for those fully vaccinated with a booster, which was 6.9 on Jan. 15, dropped to 4 on Sunday. For those vaccinated with no booster, the rate went from 4.9 to 3.9. For those not vaccinated the rate went from 10.6 to 8.4.
