Orange County's Vaccinated Top 1.8 Million As 3oo More Sickened

ORANGE COUNTY, CA —Orange County Board of Supervisors Vice-Chairman Doug Chaffee disclosed that the board is considering accepting a $4.5 million state grant to help coronavirus vaccine outreach. Access to vaccines is not an issue, Chaffee said, but outreach is still important as officials grapple with convincing the vaccine-resistant population to get inoculated.

Orange County's hospitalizations for COVID-19 continued their uptick Thursday as more than 300 additional infections were reported. On Thursday, county health officials reported 304 more COVID-19 infections, hiking up the cumulative to 260,289.

Hospitalizations increased from 143 on Wednesday to 149, with the number of intensive care unit patients jumping from 35 to 39.

"With the Delta variant hitting people not vaccinated, that's where we need to go," Chaffee said. "This is state money and we should take advantage of it."

As of Thursday, the county reports that 1,876,853 residents are fully vaccinated.

Just over 1.75 million residents have been fully vaccinated with Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, while just over 122,ooo have been vaccinated with the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

214,245 residents are in the process of being fully vaccinated, receiving one dose of the two-dose Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.

Overall, Orange County is "doing better than our surrounding counties," Chaffee said.

The state grant will help county officials provide nonprofits and other community organizations with administrative support to hold vaccination events.

"We want to be sure our nonprofit partners out in the community have sufficient funding to do their job," Chaffee said.

Chaffee noted that the county government was doing about one-third of the vaccinations, with healthcare providers doing the rest.

"We can't just rely on people dropping by the drug store," Chaffee said of the importance of continuing outreach. "It's too serious. We have to do outreach and go through the barriers. I think we need to do that going forward with our recovery. We can't take a step back and, like it or not, the only answer is getting a shot."

County officials are not considering any other measures like a mask mandate for indoor activity or shopping for everyone, including the vaccinated, Chaffee said.

According to the weekly averages released on Tuesday, Orange County's case rate per 100,000 residents increased from 2.6 to 4.9 and the test positivity rate jumped up from 1.8% to 3.3%.

The county's Health Equity Quartile rate, which measures the disadvantaged communities hardest hit by the pandemic, increased from 1.9% to 3.4%.
The state releases weekly averages on Tuesdays.
The county had recently been reporting coronavirus statistics once a week but switched Monday to a more frequent schedule of releasing numbers every weekday in light of the increasing number of infections.

There were two new fatalities logged on Thursday. The cumulative death toll rose to 5,138.

One of the fatalities occurred on July 9, raising the death toll for this month to two. The other fatalities occurred in February.

The death toll for June is 15; 22 for May; 43 for April; 198 for March; 611 for February; 1,563 for January — the deadliest month of the pandemic — and 967 for December, the next deadliest.

Noymer said the death rate should increase in a few weeks or a month, but not at the level from the winter.

About 95% of the patients hospitalized are unvaccinated, according to county officials.

The high number of unvaccinated patients is "hopefully a reminder to the public that when they seek the risk of COVID, they would ask questions, get educated and consider the voluntary vaccine," Orange County CEO Frank Kim said Monday.

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