Coronavirus Hospitalizations Double In Orange County

ORANGE COUNTY, CA —Concern rose among some health officials as the number of those hospitalized for coronavirus has doubled since the end of June, according to reports from the OC Health Care Agency.

Epidemiologist and UC Irvine professor of population health and disease prevention, Andrew Noymer, discussed the trend he described as "worrisome."

The county has 1.8 million of its 3.3 million population fully vaccinated, so there are enough unvaccinated residents to potentially eventually threaten to overwhelm the hospital system, Noymer said.

"I'm not saying it will become overrun," he said. "It's not a prediction... (but) 40% is enough with these new variants, which are more transmissible, to generate enough cases to overrun the hospital system," Noymer said, referring to the unvaccinated population.

According to the state Department of Public Health, the county has 121 COVID-19 hospital patients with 26 intensive care. That's up from 73 hospitalized and 11 in the ICU as of July 6, the last time the county updated its statistics. The county has gone to a weekly update of statistics and will provide new statistics on Tuesday.

As of July 1, the county had 70 hospitalized, with 13 in the ICU, and on June 29, the county had 56 hospitalized, with 10 in the ICU.

As of last week, the county had 5,124 COVID-19-related fatalities, which has risen to 5,136, according to the state.

As of last Tuesday, the county's case rate edged up from 1 case in 100,0000 residents the prior week to 1.5, while the overall test positivity rate ticked up from 0.9% to 1.2%.
According to the state, the county's rate is 2.5 per 100,000 residents and the positivity rate is up to 3 percent.

Noymer implored residents to get vaccinated.

"Breakthrough infections remain rare and significantly milder clinically, including sometimes being asymptomatic," Noymer said. "And breakthrough infections really shouldn't be a major talking point at this point. It's not an epidemiologically significant factor. The current variants do not evade the vaccines."

Whether Orange County Health Care creates a breakout graph on its website showing how many new cases involve unvaccinated residents as is being done in Contra Costa County remains to be seen. Noymer feels the image of the comparison may be enough to persuade some hesitant residents to get vaccinated.

"It's this yawning divide between the vaccinated and unvaccinated in new cases," Noymer said.

City News Service, Patch Editor Ashley Ludwig contributed to this report.