Orange County’s rate of COVID-19 cases plummeted this week in a significant shift away from all-time pandemic highs two weeks ago.
The county, however, is still deep in the most-restrictive purple tier of the state’s four-tier pandemic tracking system, which has been used since August to determine which business and public sectors can safely reopen, and at what capacity, as the coronavirus continues to spread.
Orange County’s case rate fell sharply to 46.6 cases per day per 100,000 residents from 67.1 cases per 100,000 last week, according to California Department of Public Health data released Tuesday, Jan. 26.
The figures rounded out a second course-correcting week since Orange County posted a record-high case rate of 78.8 on Jan. 12.
Testing positivity – the share of nasal swab and saliva tests returning positive – dropped to 12.9% from 16.7% last week. Its health equity metric – or testing positivity among hard-hit neighborhoods where access to health care is lacking – fell to 16.6% from 21.2% last week.
Though all three critical metrics made solid gains, more relaxed pandemic rules in the next tier down remain distant. To get to the red tier – which Orange County dipped into during a pandemic respite from September to November – the case rate would have to drop below 7 cases per 100,000. The two other metrics, testing positivity and health equity, would also have to meet lower thresholds.
On Monday, California leaders lifted regional stay-at-home orders statewide, another layer of rules on top of the tier system added in response to dwindling intensive care beds amid the end-of-year coronavirus surge.
Southern California had been under the order since Dec. 6, when the adjusted adult ICU bed availability among the region’s hospitals fell below 15%.
The easing of rules surprised many who didn’t expect the ICU capacity outlook in Southern California – which stagnated at an adjusted 0% for weeks – to improve tremendously over the next month.
However, Department of Public Health officials on Monday said Southern California’s capacity is set to boost to 33.3% bed availability by Feb. 21, offering a glimpse at projection data that state leaders for weeks had used to decide whether the latest regional lockdowns should remain without publicly releasing the data.
If the state’s projections hold, Southern California, previously a region where open ICU beds were most scarce, will be better off than California as a whole, which is expected to have 30.3% ICU capacity in a month.
Dr. Richard Lee, a pulmonary critical care specialist at UCI Medical Center in Orange, said coronavirus patient levels at the hospital and its ICU have mirrored the downward trend countywide.
“We think that a lot of the spikes were secondary to a lot of holiday get-togethers, just like what we saw after Thanksgiving, and it was even amplified further after Christmas and New Year’s,” Lee said.
While hospitalizations due to COVID-19 have dropped, ICU admissions are slower to follow.
“Our ICUs are still very, very busy,” he said. “The sickest of the sick are still here.”
Lee said he and his colleagues are cautiously optimistic the pandemic’s worst is behind us.
“Hopefully we won’t have another surge to this extent,” he said. “We’re fortunate to have the vaccine. The vaccine will definitely make an impact.”
“That being said, of course we want to educate the public to be cautious, to protect themselves. We do think that COVID will still be in the community for a long time,” Lee said.
Southern California is also expected to beat the rest of the state in the average number of people each coronavirus-infected person will pass the virus onto – a metric called R-effective – according to Department of Public Health projections.
The 11-county Southern California region – which stretches from Mono to San Diego – by Feb. 21 is expected to have a viral reproduction of 0.85, meaning for every person who is infected, they will pass it onto less than one other person on average. The rest of the state’s reproduction rate by then will be 0.88, the public health forecast showed.
After a statewide rise and fall in transmission over the summer, the R-effective rose again in late October and fell sharply in late December, showing that the latest stay-at-home orders and people avoiding holiday gatherings helped, Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said Tuesday.
“We want to see it go even lower if we can,” he said.
"case" - Google News
January 27, 2021 at 08:57AM
https://ift.tt/3t1AmxG
Orange County’s coronavirus case rate dives after new year highs - OCRegister
"case" - Google News
https://ift.tt/37dicO5
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Orange County’s coronavirus case rate dives after new year highs - OCRegister"
Post a Comment