Orange County Continues March Toward Reopening More Businesses
SANTA ANA (CBSLA) — Orange County's COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths continued to trend downward Monday as the county moved closer to the red tier of the state's monitoring system.
The county reported 163 more coronavirus cases Monday and 26 additional deaths.
The numbers brought the county's total caseload to 247,914 and its death toll to 4,252.
Of the deaths reported Monday, three were skilled nursing facility residents and two were assisted living facility residents, raising the death toll among those groups to 999 and 475 respectively.
The number of people hospitalized with COVID also decreased from 296 on Sunday to 288 on Monday. Meanwhile, the number of people in intensive care dropped from 89 to and 84.
Orange County officials expect to be notified Monday evening if they will be able to graduate from the most restrictive purple tier to the red tier next week.
"We hope that is not going to be changed by one these variants in the virus coming along," said Orange County Supervisor Doug Chaffee. "There could be a surge. It's not time to let your guard down, but at the same time you can feel good about the new numbers."
The county's Disneyland mega vaccination site was reopened Monday after being closed through the weekend in order for officials to reconfigure it to include drive-thru vaccinations.
"We've had issues with the Disney site because of bad weather, winds, rain, so that is being converted to drive-through," Chaffee said. "But we continue to also do the mobile PODS."
The site will be capable of providing drive-thru vaccinations, specifically to serve people with disabilities.
Orange County officials are also expecting to receive the new Johnson & Johnson vaccines by this week.
(© Copyright 2020 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. City News Service contributed to this report.)