SANTA ANA (CNS)— Orange County on Jan. 14 reported 16 more COVID-19 fatalities and 3,331 new cases, but the positivity rate is decreasing, an official says.
The county’s positivity rate has been declining over the past several days, Orange County chief Frank Kim said. Five days ago, it was 19.75 and now it’s down to 18, Kim said. Testing demand is also slowing, he added.
Of the fatalities reported Jan. 14—bringing the death toll to 2,195—two were skilled nursing facility residents and one lived at an assisted living facility. Since the start of the pandemic began, the virus has killed 707 skilled nursing facility residents and 242 assisted living facility residents.
Since Jan. 10, the county has reported 154 deaths. Last week, the county logged 140 deaths.
The death reports are staggered and sometimes take weeks to be logged, but December was the deadliest month for the county since the pandemic began, with 476 fatalities reported so far. That tops the summer peak, when 379 died in July and 367 in August, according to Orange County Health Care Agency statistics. The deadliest day so far was Dec. 22, when 27 died.
The county’s state-adjusted intensive care unit (ICU) bed availability remains at zero, and the unadjusted figure increased from 6.9 percent to 7.4 percent. The state created the adjusted metric to reflect the difference in beds available for COVID-19 patients and non-coronavirus patients.
The Southern California region remains at zero ICU availability.
