Orange County Hospitals Fill, 23 More Coronavirus Deaths Reported

ORANGE COUNTY, CA — As the first of Orange County's frontline healthcare workers received newly arrived COVID-19 vaccinations Wednesday, 23 more residents have lost their lives in the battle with coronavirus. Area hospitals shattered coronavirus patient admittance records. The county logged 3,231 new diagnoses of COVID-19 bringing the cumulative case total to 111,168. Though the fatalities reported Wednesday date back to earlier this month, the new death toll for Orange County has reached 1,718.

Hospitalizations jumped from to 1,486 on Wednesday, including 319 ICU patients, up from 296 the previous day. Both are new records — a daily occurrence since last week.

Meanwhile, 5 medical professionals were the first to receive the coronavirus vaccine in Orange County. About 25,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine were delivered to area hospitals and distributed to health care workers, and access to testing continues to improve countywide.

Read: 5 Healthcare Workers First In Orange County To Receive Vaccine

OC's ICU bed availability dropped from 10.4% Tuesday to 9.5% in the unadjusted category and slipped down from 1.4% in the "adjusted" metric back down to zero. The state created the adjusted metric to reflect the difference in beds available for COVID-19 patients and non-coronavirus patients.

The 11-county Southern California region's percentage of available ICU beds dropped from 1.7% to 0.5%.

Orange County's adjusted daily case rate per 100,000 rose Tuesday from 30.3 the previous week to 42.7, with the positivity rate increasing from 10.6% to 13.2%. The county's Health Equity Quartile Positivity Rate, which measures the cases in highly affected, needier parts of the county, rose from 16.2% last week to 18.8%.

The county is testing 526.8 per 100,000 population on a seven-day average with a seven-day lag, which is an all-time high.
All of the county's metrics now fall within the state's most- restrictive purple tier of the state's four-tier coronavirus monitoring system.

Since Sunday, 38 deaths have been reported in Orange County. Last week, the county reported 62 fatalities, up from 41 and 26, respectively, in the two previous weeks.

Most of the fatalities reported since Friday were in the 75 and older category, but at least one was 25 to 34 years old.

Prior to this month, the record for ICU patients in Orange County was 245 during the mid-July surge. Overall hospitalizations have been breaking records daily since Dec. 2.

Dr. Paul Sheikewitz of Providence St. Joseph's Hospital in Orange was among the first to receive a vaccination Wednesday.

"The greatest challenge is the burden of the number of patients we see versus the number of staff able to take care of patients," Sheikewitz said. "Providence has done a wonderful job to expand service, but we're probably to the limit."

Dr. Jeremy Zoch, the hospital's CEO, urged residents to stay at home as much as possible, especially over the holidays.

"When (the hospital's caregivers) are normally celebrating the holidays, they're taking extra shifts and working in unexpected roles," Zoch said. "Stay at home. Stay safe and help us reduce the spread so we can keep up and care for the community here."

Dr. Clayton Chau, the county's Health Care Agency director and chief health officer, said, "We must all call on the community to not let our guard down now, not when we're so close to getting on the other side of the pandemic ... Right now we have to pull together like never before."

Zoch said the latest surge of patients "has been pretty incredible."

"Last summer, when we had our surge over July, we had the National Guard in here helping us ... But, frankly, this surge we have 75% more patients than the last surge. It has challenged us."

Zoch said his hospital's ICU beds "are really close to full ... We're fortunate we have CHOC Children's next to us and we've talked with them about giving us space to use if needed."

Dr. Stephanie Chao, director of pharmaceutical services at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach, said she experienced a "big sense of relief to see that big truck pull up" to deliver the first doses of Pfizer vaccine Wednesday morning.

"I know that our department has been working hard ... and taking it day by day, supporting each other," Chao said. "We feel Hoag has done a lot of hard work to prepare to weather different surges. We have plans in place we can activate and are already activating, so as an organization we're just working hard, doing everything we can ... Some days we just run on adrenalin and hope there's some light at the end of the tunnel. As healthcare workers, we keep going because that's all we can do. But sometimes we do need a minute to gather and reflect."

County health officials are particularly struggling with housing the elderly with dementia, who are infected and do not exhibit symptoms, Chau said.

"We can't send them to a hospital... They don't need that level of care," Chau said at Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting. "And we can't send them to a nursing facility... and we can't send them to a hotel."

Those patients will likely be housed at Fairview Developmental Center in Costa Mesa, which is expected to open on Thursday. "But we only have the availability of 50 beds," Chau said. "We're going to run out of options to take care of these people."

"I lose sleep every night," he said. "I am afraid. ... I've never been so afraid of Christmas and New Year's in my whole life ... I can't imagine what it would be like after the holidays if people don't listen and don't comply."

The governor's latest restrictions are set to run through at least Dec. 27, but with the surge in cases and patients, "I don't think we can get out of it," Chau said.

Supervisor Doug Chaffee said he received a text message from a medical professional at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton on Monday night that indicated the hospital is at "99% capacity."

The hospital's 301 beds are full with 138 COVID-19 patients, Chaffee said.

"The ICU is at 105% capacity," he said. "They're using every available bed. The emergency department has an overflow ... All the Orange County hospitals are in the same situation. It is dire, so they'll soon be erecting a tent in the parking lot, probably for triage. I think what we're seeing is not a surge, but a tsunami."

To address the need, mobile field hospitals are being set up and will be housed in large trailers and include canvas tents with hard flooring and temperature-controlled units that feature running water, toilets, showers and generators as well as air purifiers.

Fountain Valley Regional Hospital will get 50 more beds, St. Jude's will receive 25 beds and UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange will get 50 beds.

The latest by-city coronavirus count in Orange County is as follows:

Aliso Viejo - 882 Total Cases

Anaheim - 18865 Total Cases

Brea - 1242 Total Cases

Buena Park - 3257 Total Cases

Costa Mesa - 3666 Total Cases

Coto de Caza - 91 Total Cases

Cypress - 1186 Total Cases

Dana Point - 617 Total Cases

Fountain Valley - 1369 Total Cases

Fullerton - 5231 Total Cases

Garden Grove - 6826 Total Cases

Huntington Beach - 4515 Total Cases

Irvine - 4008 Total Cases

La Habra - 2930 Total Cases

La Palma - 333 Total Cases

Ladera Ranch - 379 Total Cases

Laguna Beach - 407 Total Cases

Laguna Hills - 667 Total Cases

Laguna Niguel - 1009 Total Cases

Laguna Woods - 152 Total Cases

Lake Forest - 1736 Total Cases

Los Alamitos - 439 Total Cases

Midway City - 308 Total Cases

Mission Viejo - 1834 Total Cases

Newport Beach - 1781 Total Cases

Orange - 5321 Total Cases

Placentia - 1965 Total Cases

Rancho Mission Viejo - 137 Total Cases

Rancho Santa Margarita - 703 Total Cases

Rossmoor - 86 Total Cases

San Clemente - 1225 Total Cases

San Juan Capistrano - 1161 Total Cases

Santa Ana - 21983 Total Cases

Seal Beach - 517 Total Cases

Silverado - 55 Total Cases

Stanton - 1386 Total Cases

Trabuco Canyon - 383 Total Cases

Tustin - 2641 Total Cases

Villa Park - 125 Total Cases

Westminster - 2799 Total Cases

Yorba Linda - 1706 Total Cases