“We’ve made great progress as a county,” Lisa Bartlett, Supervisor of the 5th District of Orange County, told the Business Journal.
“If you look at our hospitalization rates, our healthcare system is nowhere near overwhelmed. In fact, it’s the opposite—we have plenty of hospital bed capacity,” she said.
Data from the county showed 116 COVID-related hospitalizations late last week, compared to a peak of 2,259 hospitalizations in the first week of January. Most patients have an average length of stay of seven days in the hospital; new hospitalizations were falling rapidly as of the latter part of last week, according to large hospitals in the region.
Meanwhile, more than 1 million OC residents have been fully vaccinated and another 535,019 have received 1 of 2 doses as of late last week.
More than 80% of the county’s 3.2 million population are older than 16 and now eligible for the COVID vaccine.
Hospitalizations Recede
New COVID cases have significantly declined since the winter break.
For example, Providence last week averaged 7 new hospitalizations per day among its three hospitals, compared to its peak of 59 new hospitalizations per day the week of Jan. 3 to 9; Hoag Hospital averaged 1.5 new hospitalizations per day last week among its two hospitals, compared to its peak of 28 new hospitalizations per day the week of Dec. 20 to 26; MemorialCare had just 1 new hospitalization last week among its two hospitals, compared to its peak of 23 new hospitalizations per day the week of Jan. 3 to 9; and UCI Health averaged 11 new hospitalizations per day last week, compared to its peak of 28 new hospitalizations per day the week of Dec. 21 to 27.
“We are admitting much fewer patients to the hospital,” Phillip Robinson, medical director of infection prevention and hospital epidemiology at Hoag, told the Business Journal.
“COVID-19 outbreaks in our local nursing homes have essentially been eliminated” due to vaccinations, he said. “Most patients being admitted have not been vaccinated and are in the age groups that have not had an opportunity to get vaccinated until recently.”
Vulnerable Groups
Data from the county shows efforts to vaccinate the most vulnerable populations are already paying off.
For example, nearly 80% of the area’s senior population was fully vaccinated as of late last week.
Likewise, efforts to vaccinate residents in impacted ZIP codes, such as Anaheim and Santa Ana, appear effective. About 76% of the 65+ population in Anaheim and 86.5% of the 65+ population in Santa Ana was fully vaccinated.
Cities in the county that were hit harder by COVID-19 have continued to fare better in terms of case counts in recent weeks.
Anaheim has had 1.6 new cases per 100,000 residents reported in the past two weeks; Santa Ana has had 1.9 average new cases. That’s better than some coastal cities, like Laguna Beach and Newport Beach, which have seen 5.2 and 2 new cases per 100,000 residents in the past two weeks, respectively.
Change in Strategy
Now that vaccines are available to the 16+ population, the county is shifting its strategy to expand access to vulnerable groups and counter vaccine hesitancy.
“Most cities are reporting greater outreach is needed, along with transportation,” Bartlett said.
The county is looking at a range of alternatives to its super points-of-dispensing (PODs); it doesn’t plan to replace its Disneyland site, which closed last week as the park reopened for the first time in over a year.
Furthermore, health systems are ramping up clinics at various sites such as local provider offices and large-scale venues (see story, page 14), thus freeing up some resources for the county to focus on smaller mobile vaccination clinics.
These clinics can typically reach 300 to 500 people a day “in the communities that are most vulnerable and hard to reach,” Bartlett said.
A “critical component” of that strategy are partnerships with community-based organizations, which have been “phenomenal” providing support such as language assistance, she said.
Yellow Tier in Sight
“We’ve met 2 out of 3 metrics for the yellow tier, and we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel with vaccinations,” Bartlett said.
Last week, the county’s test positivity rate remained flat at 1.4%, meeting the least restrictive yellow tier’s requirements of less than 2% for the fifth week.
OC has also met yellow tier requirements for the third coronavirus monitoring metric, the health equity rate, which measures positive test rates in harder-hit neighborhoods. That figure is at 1.9%.
OC’s case rates dipped to 2.6 cases per 100,000 residents from 2.8 the week prior, keeping the region within orange tier metrics for the sixth consecutive week.
The county needs fewer than 2 new daily cases per 100,000 residents to enter into the least restrictive yellow tier, though if the state continues with its strong vaccination pace, specifically for harder-hit communities, the state could drop its color-coded tier system and fully reopen by June 15.
