'There's Gonna Be A Breaking Point': OC Reports 2,144 New COVID-19 Cases, Record Number Of Hospitalizations
SANTA ANA (CBSLA) — The Orange County Health Care Agency Monday reported 2,144 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases, bringing the countywide totals to 149,607 cases and 1,846 deaths.
Health officials also reported there were 2,031 COVID-19 patients hospitalized, a jump from the 1,990 hospitalizations reported Sunday. Of those hospitalized, 453 patients were being treated in intensive care units, an increase of 10 from Sunday.
"There's gonna to be a breaking point, and I just don't when that'll come," Dr. Tirso del Junco, chief medical officer at KPC Health, said. "And when it does, it's catastrophic."
County leaders and healthcare professionals said they were bracing for another surge in cases and hospitalizations related to holiday gatherings.
"We knew Thanksgiving was going to provide a surge, but we didn't know how much so we had surge capacity," Orange County Supervisor Lisa Bartlett said. "Hopefully, we're on the downside of the Thanksgiving COVID surge, but now we're going into Christmas and New Year's (potential surges) and we don't have any excess ICU capacity and that concerns me a lot."
The county's state-adjusted ICU bed availability remained at zero on Monday, though officials continued to stress that the number does not mean there are zero available beds and encouraged anyone with a medical emergency to call 911.
Though Bartlett added that the stress on the healthcare system was region-wide, with the Southern California regional also at zero ICU capacity, according to the state.
"It's not like if we get overrun we can go to L.A. or San Diego or Imperial County," she said. "The concern is staffing (ICU beds)."
The county's jail outbreak also continued its upward trend with 1,099 inmates currently infected and test results pending for another 1,080.
Orange County's adjusted daily case rate per 100,000 stood at 51.8 on Monday, with the positivity rate of 15.2%. The county's health equity quartile positivity rate, which measures the cases in highly affected, needier parts of the county, rose from 18.8% last week to 22.7%.
(© Copyright 2020 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. City News Service contributed to this report.)
