COVID-19 hospitalizations and positivity rates hold steady in Orange County

Orange County’s COVID-19 positivity rates and hospitalizations remained relatively the same as last week, according to data released Thursday by the Orange County Health Care Agency.

The county also logged nine more fatalities, increasing the total death toll to 7,459. Seven of the fatalities occurred last month, increasing September’s death toll to 43. One fatality occurred in August, raising that month’s death toll to 104, and another happened in July, increasing that month’s death toll to 127.

The county, which provides updates on Thursdays, reported hospitalizations dropped from 163 on Sept. 29 to 133 on Wednesday. The number of intensive care unit patients decreased from 23 to 14.

The county has 26% of its ICU beds available. Officials grow concerned when that percentage drops below 20%. Of those hospitalized 68.7% are incompletely vaccinated or unvaccinated.

The county logged 1,495 cases, increasing the cumulative case count to 669,278.

The county’s test positivity rate went from 6.1% last week to 6.4%, with the statistic declining from 6.5% to 6.4% in the health equity quartile, which measures the communities hardest hit by the pandemic. The daily case rate per 100,000 dropped from 7.4 to 7.2 on seven-day average with seven-day lag, and from 7.8 to 7.6 in the adjusted daily case rate per 100,000 on a seven-day average with a seven-day lag.

The positivity rate for those fully vaccinated with a booster dropped from 9 on Sept. 25 to 6.6 to Oct. 2, according to the latest data available. For those vaccinated with no booster the rate went from 4.3 to 4.4. For those not vaccinated the rate decreased from 8.3 to 7.2.

Officials corrected an “irregularity” in state vaccine data last week. The number of residents fully vaccinated is 2,353,187. The number of residents who have received at least one dose is 209,790. The number of booster shots administered is 1,379,689.

The number of children up to 4 years old who have received at least one dose is 14,091 with 6,166 fully vaccinated. Just 3.3% of the county’s population in the age group is fully vaccinated. For 5- to 11-year-old children, 96,618 are fully vaccinated, about 36.5% of the age group. In the 12-to-17 age group, 69.8% are fully vaccinated.

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