Orange County Continues To See Encouraging COVID-19 Trends
SANTA ANA (CBSLA) — Orange County's push to graduate to the less-restrictive red tier of the state's COVID-19 monitoring system continued Friday as cases and hospitalizations declined.
Health officials reported 62 additional death Friday 232 new COVID-19 cases.
The numbers brought the county's death toll to raising 4,075 and the caseload to 247,372.
Of the deaths reported Friday, 12 were skilled nursing facility residents and nine were assisted living facility residents, raising the cumulative totals in those groups to 975 and 462, respectively.
The number of people hospitalized with COVID dropped 379 on Thursday to 339 and the number of those being treated in intensive care units dipped from 97 to 91.
"The trends are good," Orange County CEO Frank Kim said. "The trends would indicate we have a very good chance to make it (to the red tier) next week, but we won't know till we see the data."
The county must hang on to its case rates and positivity rates through this Sunday and next Sunday to graduate to the red tier. County officials hope they can move tiers by March 17.
Orange County Supervisor Lisa Bartlett is optimistic about getting up from the red to the orange tier soon as well.
"Our numbers continue to improve -- we could actually be in the orange tier in the not-too-distant future," Bartlett said.
The Disneyland mass vaccine distribution site was closed for a few days so tents could be reconfigured to allow for drive-thru access for people with disabilities, Kim said. The site is set to reopen on Monday.
The Disneyland site opened on Jan. 13 as O.C.'s first large-scale vaccination site. However, it has had to close intermittently on several occasions due to strong winds or vaccine supply shortages.
(© Copyright 2020 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. City News Service contributed to this report.)