OC COVID-19 Trends Continue In Positive Direction As Vaccine Eligibility Opens To Those 16+
SANTA ANA (CBSLA) — Orange County continued to show positive COVID trends Thursday while hospitalization numbers remained mostly stable.
County officials reported just 65 new cases Thursday and seven more fatalities.
The new numbers brought the county's caseload to 252,692 and the overall death toll to 4,869.
The number of people hospitalized increased from 122 on Wednesday to 125, with the number of intensive care unit patients decreasing from 30 to 29.
Andrew Noymer, a UC Irvine professor of population health and disease prevention, said the county's trends continue to offer good news.
"Hospitalizations are still holding steady, but not going up appreciably," Noymer said.
Meanwhile Thursday, anyone 16 and older could get a vaccination, but it will likely be a few weeks before it's easy to get an appointment for an inoculation, Noymer said.
"I have Twitter followers saying they can't get appointments," Noymer said. "To some extent you have to be somewhat tenacious if you want a vaccination within the next few weeks. Just because we're going wide doesn't mean you weren't going to have go through some rigamarole."
Noymer added, "People are just going to need to be patient and keep trying."
So far, the county has dispensed nearly 2 million doses of vaccine, Orange County CEO Frank Kim said.
(© Copyright 2020 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. City News Service contributed to this report.)
