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Health May 04, 2023
| Image courtesy of the Orange County Health Care Agency
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Orange County’s COVID-19 hospitalizations continued a trend down as the county logged 18 more fatalities, half of which happened last month, according to data released Thursday by the Orange County Health Care Agency.
The number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 infections stood at 86 last Wednesday, but was down to 67 as of this Wednesday. The number of patients in intensive care dipped from 12 to 11.
The county logged 18 more fatalities, boosting the overall death toll to 8,127.
Half of those fatalities happened in April, boosting the month’s total to 22. Two occurred in March, increasing its death toll to 74. One fatality happened in February, raising its death toll to 73.
Two fatalities happened in January, raising its death toll to 131.
The eight fatalities in April boosted the month’s total to 13. The other fatality occurred in March, hiking last month’s death toll to 72.
February’s death toll also stands at 72 while January’s is 129.
Of those hospitalized in the county, 60.9% are unvaccinated or partly vaccinated. The ICU patients are 61.9% partly vaccinated or unvaccinated.
The number of residents fully vaccinated increased from 2,371,188 to 2,371,353. The number of residents who have received at least one dose is 227,869. The number of booster shots administered increased from 1,458,139 to 1,458,708.
The number of children up to 4 years old who have received at least one dose inched up from 19,372 to 19,397 with 12,671 fully vaccinated. Just 6.8% of the county’s population in the age group is fully vaccinated.
For 5- to 11-year-old children, 97,722 are fully vaccinated, about 36.9% of the age group. In the 12-to-17 age group, 69.7% are fully vaccinated.
The test positivity rate remained at 4%, the same as last week, and ticked up from 3.4% to 3.8% in the health equity quartile, which measures the communities hardest hit by the pandemic.
The positivity rate for those fully vaccinated with a booster went from 2.6 on April 9 to 2.7 on April 16. For those vaccinated with no booster, the rate went from 1.6 to 1.3. For those not vaccinated the rate went from 5.1 to 5.3.
The daily case rate per 100,000 went from 2.3 to 2.2 on a seven-day average with a seven-day lag and dipped from 2.1 to 2 in the adjusted daily case rate per 100,000 on a seven-day average with a seven-day lag.
The county logged 1,859 new cases of COVID-19, increasing the total since the start of the pandemic to 720,239.
The OCHCA reports COVID-19 data every Thursday.
