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In the space of just one week, Orange County added nearly 300 deaths from the coronavirus.
The OC Healthcare Agency’s daily monitoring listed 43 new deaths on Saturday, January 16, for a total of 2,320 known deaths related to COVID. The day before, Friday, the county reported a one-day record of 82 deaths.
However, offering some hope that new infections could level off for now, Orange County counted more than 700 fewer new coronavirus cases on Saturday than a week ago, down from 4,204 to 3,454.
Declared deaths do not represent the actual sum on a given day. County data is compiled from death certificates or collected during case investigations, so deaths may have occurred days or weeks ago.
Three of the deaths reported on Saturday were residents of skilled nursing facilities and two were residents of assisted living facilities.
Since the start of follow-up, the county has verified 209,365 cases of the coronavirus in total.
While the vast majority of people who test positive show milder symptoms, 542 coronavirus patients were in intensive care units on Saturday – five below the daily high of 547 last Sunday.
With the number of cases increasing after Thanksgiving and then the Christmas gatherings, hospitals have struggled to meet the dramatically increased demand – adding temporary units in parking lots to accommodate additional beds.
Overworked medical workers work longer and assume that caring for more patients doesn’t allow it.
Hospitals and funeral homes have used trailers with freezers to store excess bodies.
County-adjusted ICU bed availability remains at zero, although this does not mean that all ICU beds are occupied.
The California Department of Public Health “ takes the actual percentage of adult intensive care beds remaining each day and changes it to reflect the unbalanced share of COVID-19 patients in intensive care versus others who also need of these beds for life-saving treatment.
The unadjusted availability of intensive care beds for Southern California was 8.9% on Saturday.
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