SANTA ANA, Calif. (CNS) — Orange County Monday reported 170 new COVID-19 infections, which reflects new cases since Friday, as hospitalizations remained stable.
The new infections pushed the cumulative case count to 256,222.
The county no longer posts COVID-19 data on the weekends. Starting Thursday, the county will begin posting data weekly.
Hospitalizations inched up from 49 on Friday to 51 on Monday, while the number of intensive care unit patients increased from 9 to 11.
The Orange County Health Care Agency also logged four more fatalities, but three occurred in January, including a skilled nursing facility resident, hiking up the cumulative in that category to 1,137. One of the fatalities occurred this month.
The overall death toll is 5,118 for the county.
The death toll now stands at 6 for June; 22 for May; 42 for April; 198 for March; 608 for February; 1,559 for January, the deadliest month of the pandemic; and 966 for December, the next deadliest.
Andrew Noymer, a UC Irvine professor of population health and disease prevention, said Friday that, "The numbers are still looking good for Orange County."
There has been some concern about the more contagious Delta variant spurring an increase in COVID-19 cases globally, but Noymer emphasized that "the Delta variant is covered by the current vaccines."
He added, "What worries me about the Delta variant is not the Delta variant per se ... It's some future variant ... Anyone concerned about Delta should get vaccinated right away."
As the coronavirus spreads to unvaccinated people it could continue to mutate and develop strains that could more easily evade vaccines, Noymer said.
According to figures released on Wednesday, the county has 1,734,537 fully vaccinated residents. Of those, 1,621,711 received both doses and 264,074 have received one shot of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine, which require two doses. Another 112,826 people received the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
According to weekly state data released every Tuesday, the county's average daily new case rate per 100,000 residents ticked up from 0.8 last week to 0.9, while the overall test positivity rate ticked up from 0.6% to 0.7%.
The county's Health Equity Quartile rate, which measures positivity in hot spots in disadvantaged communities, dipped down from 0.8% to 0.7%. That would have kept the county safely in the least-restrictive yellow tier, but that system ended with the state's reopening on June 15.
The county reported 15,338 tests, increasing the cumulative tally to 4,105,137.
The county's weekly average of tests per 100,000 residents ticked up from 195.4 last week to 198.6.