The county’s COVID-19 hospitalization trend continued, with 1,682 (a jump of 1,601 on Saturday) and 375 coronavirus patients in intensive care units, up from 361 the day before.
Both are new records, a daily fact dating back to early December.
Six of the 15 deaths reported on Sunday were residents in qualified nursing centers and another six were members of qualified nursing staff. The county has recorded a total of 632 deaths from COVID-19 in specialized nursing facilities and another 165 deaths in assisted living facilities.
Bed availability in the county ICU remained zero on the “adjusted” metric and was 12.1% in the unadjusted number. The state created the adjusted metric to reflect the difference in beds available for COVID-19 patients and patients without coronavirus.
The county recorded 20,198 COVID-19 tests on Sunday for a total of 1,851,843 to date. There have been 72,627 documented recoveries.
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The county is testing 526.8 people per 100,000 on an average of seven days with a seven-day delay, which is the all-time high.
All of the county’s metrics are now within the state’s most restricted and purple level of the state’s four-level coronavirus control system.
Earlier this month, the record of ICU patients in Orange County was 245 during the mid-July rise. General hospitalizations have broken records daily since Dec. 2.
Dr. Clayton Chau, director of the Orange County Health Care Agency and county health chief, issued two orders this week in an attempt to reduce the spread of coronavirus in nursing homes and follow the same in the quarantine durations recommended by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Chau issued an order Tuesday on a ban on community food and group activities in residential centers for the elderly when a patient or staff is diagnosed with coronavirus. Group food and activities can be resumed after two consecutive rounds of COVID-19 testing of all residents and employees with a minimum separation of one week and return negative.
On Thursday, Chau also shortened his quarantine from 14 to 10 days to follow the new CDC guidelines.
Orange County CEO Frank Kim said the order came after state officials asked the county to help the residences.
“According to our review, it appeared that in many of the facilities they ate together in the dining rooms and did not take as many precautions as recommended,” Kim said.
Kim said he was concerned about the growing number of cases and hospitalizations.
Beyond stepping up testing and setting up mobile field hospitals to help overflow medical centers, Kim said, “All you can do is beg people to change their behavior.”
Hospital executives and doctors have told her that “her biggest fear is Christmas,” Kim said.
“They’re seeing the trend and they still don’t see the end of the tunnel,” Kim said. “They are concerned. They are activating their increase plans. Several are requesting mobile hospital units and we are responding immediately.”
Orange County Supervisor Lisa Bartlett noted that some neighboring counties see twice as many coronavirus cases as Orange County and have zero capacity for patients, so they probably OC you will have to take on some of them.
County officials received some good news when it was discovered that the county received additional doses of the new Pfizer vaccine.
“Some of the vials have additional doses,” he said. “So we get more doses than expected, so that’s good.”
If hospitals are overwhelmed, doctors will have to make “difficult decisions” when choosing patients, Bartlett said.
“We don’t want to get to that point,” he said. “We want to care for everyone who goes into the emergency room.”
This week the OCHCA issued an order to suspend the capacity of hospitals participating in the 911 system to request an ambulance diversion to other medical centers.
Dr Carl Schultz, the agency’s EMS medical director, said emergencies had become so overwhelmed by the increase in COVID-19 that “almost all hospitals were being diverted”.
“If nothing is done, ambulances would soon run out of hospitals that could take their patients,” Schultz said.
“Therefore, we temporarily suspended ambulance diversion. While this will put additional stress on hospitals, it will spread across the county and help alleviate the growing concern of finding hospital destinations for ambulances.”
Schultz added: “As far as we know, this has never happened before.”
The county has deployed mobile field hospitals to help with the overflow. UC Irvine Medical Center, Fountain Valley Hospital and Hoag Memorial Presbyterian Hospital received 50 more beds each, and St. Joseph of Orange got 25 more beds.
Orange County’s adjusted daily case rate per 100,000 rose Tuesday from 30.3 the week before to 42.7, with a positivity rate rising from 10.6% to 13.2%. The positivity rate for the county health equity quartile, which measures cases in most affected and neediest areas of the county, rose from 16.2% last week to 18.8%.
County has received the first shipment of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine and county officials expect about 32,000 doses of the Modern vaccine next week.
Meanwhile, the annual Christmas boat parade in Newport Beach was canceled this year, but that did not deter some owners from organizing an unofficial one that began Thursday night and lasted until Saturday.
John Pope, a spokesman for Newport Beach, said city police are partnering with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department’s port patrol to provide enough staff to help navigators in an emergency, but they won’t try. stop the parade or break crowds of spectators.
“As for the city, it’s a public safety issue,” the Pope said. “Port patrols and lifeguards are out there with a presence on the water for safety reasons and are coordinating with the Orange County sheriff to provide basic public safety protections.”
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