Orange County Sees Rise in COVID-19 Hospitalizations
SANTA ANA (CBSLA) - Officials in Orange County reported 422 new cases of COVID-19 today, which is a significant jump from recent days. There was also an increase in residents hospitalized for the virus and five additional deaths.
The spike in new cases is at least partially because of backlogged positive reports from a private testing lab, but hospitalizations went from 114 on Friday to a 125 today. Still officials remain optimistic because the county has been on a flat case rate for about seven days, according to Orange County CEO Frank Kim, and the hardest hit communities continue to improve.
"That indicates we have closed the gap between the testing positivity in our most hard-hit communities," Kim said. "Some of that can be attributed to the hard work staff is doing with mobile clinics."
What does bother Kim, though is the expected lack of the single dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine next week.
"I'm a little bit worried about it because we're expecting to see a bump in demand and we hoped that would coincide with an increase in doses.
