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California’s coronavirus watchlist for struggling counties is back on track after huge problems in one state’s test results database rejected crucial measures public health officials are using to tracking the pandemic – which for weeks made Orange County and others look better than they actually were.
Orange County remains on the watch list, but there are positive signs local rates of new cases and the percentage of tests completed are positive – two measures that have kept Orange County above limits state – tend to achieve public health goals.
Trends in case rates, positivity tests and other data points monitored daily by state and county health officials indicate that neighboring San Diego County could be removed from the watch list as early as Tuesday. August 18, Governor Gavin Newsom said at a press conference Monday. , August 17.
Newsom said the State Department of Public Health has added a few rural counties to the watch list, but removed Santa Cruz County, bringing the listed total to 42 of the state’s 58 counties.
Dr Clayton Chau, director of the Orange County Health Care Agency and interim health officer, suggested the county was functioning well enough that it could also be removed from the watch list soon, now that the state’s data issues have been resolved and local health has been resolved. officials have a clearer picture of Orange County’s position.
“We are calculating our own data and we see a trend where we will likely be off the list,” Chau said.
As of Monday, Orange County’s case rate – new cases over two weeks – was 118 cases per 100,000 people, still above the state health department’s threshold of 100 per 100,000 people.
The case rate, down from peaks in mid-July, is the only metric that keeps Orange County on the watch list.
Positivity testing – the share of positive tests out of all tests done over a week – fell below the state’s 8% limit – to 6.8% by Monday.
Orange County has been on the watch list since late June, added due to skyrocketing case rates and positivity testing, followed by high rates of new COVID-19 hospitalizations – these have also declined since .
If Orange County leaves the watch list, it could lead to the reopening of in-person education, as well as the easing of other COVID-19 lockdowns that, for months, have inhibited ordinary public life.
But it will be up to the public health officer to decide whether certain covered businesses – shopping malls, gyms, salons – will be allowed to reopen, even if a county is taken off the watch list. And schools wouldn’t immediately be able to send students back to campus.
“Even though we are not on the list, it would take 14 days before schools could reopen,” Chau said.
Chau warned that although Orange County could be removed from the list, the margins would be slim as the battle to remove COVID-19 continued and the county could end up on the list again.
“Even if our numbers are good for a number of days and we have crossed the state threshold, we should restart the clock,” he said.
Rather than wait, more than 80 mostly private elementary schools in Orange County have requested a waiver to opt out of online learning now and teach their students in person.
Orange County officials told the registry that applications filed so far are undergoing an initial review to ensure completeness, and none have been approved or denied due to issues with state data.
Coronavirus case rates had been artificially low since late July, when state health officials said server crashes in its CalREDIE test results data system, coupled with reporting failures from the state. one of California’s largest test labs, have plunged test totals. The state’s CalREDIE system is being replaced and authorities are investigating the outage.
Newsom said on Monday that the backlog resulting from 295,000 tests had been resolved and that the state had worked on nearly 15,000 positive cases from that pool.
Even with the reporting issue resolved, Orange County appears to have experienced a period of fewer testing at the end of July – dropping from a high of 50,000 in the week ending July 12 to around 38,000 during the week ending July 26. large drive-thru test site at the Anaheim Convention Center, where hundreds of people were cleaned every day.
The number of tests has rebounded and Orange County exceeds the state’s average target of 150 tests per day per 100,000 population. It’s a new threshold state health officials have added since data issues became apparent to ensure counties are testing enough.
As of Monday, Orange County was performing an average of 200 tests per 100,000 residents.
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