When Would Orange County Arrive At Yellow Tier Status?

ORANGE COUNTY, CA —On Monday, Orange County reported 46 more residents are infected with COVID-19. Meanwhile, hospitalizations continued to trend down in a pattern that could soon allow the county to move into the less restrictive yellow tier of the state's reopening plan, officials say.

Orange County Supervisor Lisa Bartlett spoke on the falling numbers and the possibility of lessening restrictions.

"If everything continues like this in another two weeks, May 25 would be the first day to open officially in the yellow tier," Bartlett says.

According to numbers released Monday by the Orange County Health Care Agency, the county's hospitalizations due to the coronavirus dropped from 84 Sunday to 80 Monday. The number of patients in intensive care ticked down from 21 to 20.

Bartlett noted that the positivity rates in some of the underserved communities in Santa Ana and Anaheim are lower than what is being recorded in some zip codes in Newport Beach and Laguna Beach.

The county had 34.8% of its ICU beds and 77% of its ventilators available.

Monday's figures brought the county's totals to 254,357 cases. There were no new fatalities logged, so the death toll remained at 5,008.

Of the eight fatalities logged this past weekend, three occurred in April, increasing the death toll last month to 38. Three of the fatalities occurred in March, increasing the death toll for that month to 187. Two of the fatalities occurred in February, increasing the death toll for that month to 584.

The death toll in January, the deadliest month of the pandemic, stands at 1,533, and in December, the next deadliest, the death toll remains at 944.

The county has been in the yellow tier for positivity rates for a few weeks but remained in the orange tier after the weekly rankings were released last Tuesday when Orange County's weekly average of daily new cases per 100,000 residents improved from 2.6 to 2.4.

The overall test positivity rate improved from 1.4% to 1.3%. And the county's Health Equity Quartile rate, which measures positivity in hotspots in disadvantaged communities, declined from 1.9% to 1.4%.

Graduating up from the orange to the yellow tier allows for expanding capacity for many businesses such as movie theaters and gyms, Bartlett said.

"Museums, zoos and aquariums can open up at 100%," Bartlett said. "And for the first time bars and distilleries can open indoors."

The hospitalizations have "dropped dramatically," Bartlett said.

"At the height of the crisis, we were almost running out of ICU beds," she said. "Look at where we're at today."

Orange County supervisors are girding for another onslaught of public backlash Tuesday at their board meeting regarding a proposal to issue a digital record to vaccine recipients who request one after getting inoculated at a county-run site. One vocal group has been pushing a conspiracy theory that the county will adopt a "vaccine passport" system that would favor residents who choose to get inoculated, which officials say is not true.

County officials, in fact, have put the brakes on the proposal to issue a QR code to vaccine recipients who registered through the county's Othena app for appointments to receive a vaccine, Bartlett said.

"We're going to pilot it with employees in the county as a voluntary opt-in... to help us test the software to make sure it works," Bartlett said.

Bartlett said the QR code cannot be used to "track" anyone or reveal personal private healthcare information.

"The QR code is akin to an (airline) boarding pass that you can print off," Bartlett said. "Or you can keep the boarding pass like I do in my digital wallet on my smartphone. This isn't government-mandated. It's an individual's choice."

Also, Bartlett said the QR code would verify the name of a vaccine recipient, which a business can check against a government-issued ID.

"And that's it," she said. "It's a one-time-only serial number for that scan. The only thing retained from the scan is a randomized serial number."

Bartlett said supervisors' offices continue to receive calls from residents concerned about a "vaccine passport" program that does not exist.

County officials said they have gone to great pains to explain that they cannot prohibit anyone from any business or public place based on whether they have been vaccinated. Still, private businesses can do so if they wish.

The county reported 4,087 tests on Monday, for a cumulative total of 3,744,189.

City News Service, Patch Editor Ashley Ludwig contributed to this report.