OC COVID Cases, Hospitalization Continue To Decline As County Waits For More Vaccines To Arrive
SANTA ANA (CBSLA) — Orange County officials Friday reported continued good news regarding declining COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations as the county waited for word on the restocking of vaccines held up by winter storms.
The county reported 324 new cases of COVID-19 Friday along with 41 additional fatalities.
The numbers brought the county's caseload to 243,989 and the death toll to 3,726.
Hospitalizations continued to decline as well. There were 636 people hospitalized with COVID on Friday, down from 663 the day prior. Patients in intensive care dipped down from 230 on Thursday to 215 on Friday.
The county has 14% of its ICU beds available and 59% of its ventilators.
The positivity rate as of Friday had shrunk to 6.3% and the case rate per 100,000 was down to 15.4. The positivity rate among the county's hot spots in minority communities is at 8.4%, according to Orange County CEO Frank Kim.
That puts the county closer to the red tier and if trends continue the county could move up from the most-restrictive purple tier up to the red tier sometime next month.
"We got through the Super Bowl and got through it fairly cleanly," Kim said of the expected bump from gatherings around the annual game that did not materialize locally. "Orange County residents are to be congratulated. They showed a level of restraint."
Disneyland's vaccine super site and the clinic that just opened at Santa Ana College closed temporarily because severe weather across the country delayed delivery of COVID-19 vaccine supplies to Orange County.
A shipment of Moderna vaccines was scheduled to be delivered Tuesday, but the supplies did not arrive, according to the Orange County officials.
The weather-caused supply shortage also may delay next Wednesday's scheduled opening of another new distribution point at the Anaheim Convention Center.
"We didn't get any (more) vaccine yet, so we're on a holding pattern with the temporary closures of at least the Disney POD," Kim said. "And there's no change to the current timeline for Santa Ana College and Soka University."
The vaccine distribution at Soka will be closed Sunday and at Santa Ana College, however, the Santa Ana College site was planned to be closed on Sundays and Mondays anyway.
(© Copyright 2020 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. City News Service contributed to this report.)
