Orange County showed progress Tuesday, Oct. 20, with two key pandemic tracking measurements and at least held steady with the third metric that determine which level of the state’s four-tier system a community will fall – important because the tiers dictate how much can reopen in a county.
In this week’s tier system update, the county’s case rate didn’t budge at 4.6 cases per day per 100,000 residents.
The percentage of tests coming back positive – or testing positivity – improved modestly to 3.2% from 3.5% last week.
But the county’s health equity metric – testing positivity among neighborhoods hit hardest by the pandemic – posted a strong gain to 5.6% from 6.5% last week.
The strong progress in health equity has put the county on a more solid track toward advancing to the less-restrictive orange tier for “moderate” coronavirus risk, which would allow bowling alleys and outdoor bars to reopen, with modifications, and let other businesses revert to fuller capacities.
For Orange County to move to the next tier, its case rate has to drop below 4 cases per 100,000 residents, testing positivity below 5% and health equity below 5.3%.
During a news conference Thursday, Oct. 15, county leaders were hopeful the promising trends will hold.
“We’re very close on health equity. I think that’s part of the reason why we have been encouraged,” said Dr. Clayton Chau, Orange County Health Care Agency director and county health officer. “We have a way to go, but we’re doing it together, the numbers show it.”
Chau again stressed the importance of keeping up pandemic habits: social distancing, mask wearing and hand washing. He cautioned against being tempted to let such prevention measures slip as Halloween and other holidays approach.
Health officials on Friday unveiled a new strike team to provide free COVID-19 testing and other resources in Orange County’s pandemic-impacted Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
The coalition of county officials and various nonprofits, called the OC API Taskforce, has goals similar to the county’s Latino Health Equity Initiative, which has focused on hotspot Latino neighborhoods where coronavirus spread rapidly.
By helping residents of areas that need it most, leaders hope to keep lowering the county’s health equity, a relatively new metric.
Counties must remain in a tier – purple, red, orange or yellow – for at least three weeks and qualify in all three metrics for the next tier for two weeks to advance. Tiers can’t be skipped and counties that backtrack in any metric could be bumped back to a stricter status.
The state health department announces tier movements and metric updates each Tuesday.
While Orange County’s case rate, testing positivity and newly-added health equity have slowly improved since the four-tier system was implemented in late August, the county has not yet broken out of the second-worst red tier, which it reached Sept. 8.
Neighboring Riverside County on Tuesday regressed to the purple tier for “widespread” risk, rejoining Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties in the most restrictive tier.
In a regular update Tuesday, the Orange County Health Care Agency reported two new coronavirus-related deaths and 302 new cases out of 10,271 tests received.
Total coronavirus cases in the county climbed to 57,373 and total deaths rose to 1,412. Health officials estimate that 51,255 people have recovered from COVID-19 as of Tuesday.
The number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals around the county was unchanged since Monday at 168.
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