Orange County Lowers Coronavirus Death Toll After Duplicates Discovered
SANTA ANA (CBSLA) -- Orange County health officials reported 886 new coronavirus cases and no additional deaths on Monday.
To date, the county's total is at 40,527 coronavirus cases and 724 deaths, after the Orange County Health Care Agency lowered the death toll following the discovery of duplicates.
Orange County Supervisor Lisa Bartlett said the influx of reported cases is due to the state resolving the issue with its reporting system that caused a backlog of cases.
"You're going to see some spikes (in coronavirus cases), but it's not necessarily that our cases are spiking, just the reporting of them are,'' she said. "I don't want the public to get alarmed when they see this spike in numbers. They've had to go back and reconcile some things in the system.''
Additionally, the number of hospitalized coronavirus patients continued to trend downward in O.C. on Monday.
The number of people hospitalized dropped from 487 Sunday to 468, according to the HCA, and the number of patients in ICU decreased from 163 to 152.
The rate of residents testing positive for coronavirus in Orange County has gone down from 7.7% to 7.4%, which remains lower than the state's desired threshold of 8%.
The county's case rate per 100,000 residents decreased from 90 to 82.1, but is higher than the state's threshold of 25 per 100,000 residents.
(© Copyright 2020 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. City News Service contributed to this report.)
