SANTA ANA, Calif. (CNS) — Even as COVID-19 infections continue to climb in Orange County, hospitalizations remained stable and no new fatalities were logged since last week, according to data released Wednesday by the Orange County Health Care Agency.

Hospitalizations ticked up from 138 on Friday to 139 as of Tuesday, according to the latest state figures. The number of intensive care unit patients declined from 21 on Friday to 19.

The county has 30.1% of its ICU beds available, well above the 20% level when officials get concerned.

"It's more of the same, but nowhere near the 200 number (of patients) that I would call a full-blown wave of hospitalizations," Andrew Noymer, an epidemiologist and UC Irvine professor of population health and disease prevention, told City News Service on Friday.

Some of those hospital cases may be what officials call "incidental" as they are patients who were admitted to be treated for another malady and tested positive. It was unclear what the ratio is.

Noymer told CNS that the ICU numbers have not gone up markedly.

"The ICU is still low, which is important, and which kind of indicates some of those (hospitalizations) may be incidental (cases)."

The county's testing positivity rate increased from 6.2% on Friday to 6.9% on Monday. The rate went from 2.9% to 3.2% in the health equity quartile, which measures the communities hardest hit by the pandemic.

The daily case rate per 100,000 people in Orange County increased from 21.5 on Friday to 23.7 on Monday on a seven-day average with seven-day lag, and from 15.9 to 17.7 for the adjusted rate with a seven-day average and seven- day lag.

The county logged 2,620 more infections Friday through Monday, raising the cumulative case count to 571,995. The overall death toll remained at 7,034.

Of those hospitalized, 83.3% are unvaccinated, and 86.5% of ICU patients are not inoculated, according to the OCHCA.

May's death toll stands at 10, while last month's death toll stands at 30, March's is 86, February's is 330, January's is 554, and December's is 115.

The case rate per 100,000 people for fully vaccinated residents who have received a vaccine booster increased from 21.4 on May 14 to 24.6 on May 21, the latest data available show. The case rate for residents fully vaccinated with no booster went from 12.9 to 15.1, and the case rate for residents not fully vaccinated went from 19.4 to 22.5. 

The number of vaccines administered in Orange County increased from 2,315,464 to 2,318,150, according to Tuesday's data.

That number includes an increase from 2,175,562  to 2,178,671 residents who have received the two-dose regimen of vaccines from Pfizer or Moderna.

The number of residents receiving the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine decreased from 139,902 to 139,479 as officials continue to adjust to a new accounting of shots administered in the counties across the state.

Booster shots increased from 1,283,905 to 1,292,844..

In the age group of 5 to 11 years old, the number of children vaccinated increased from 90,917 to 91,281, versus 177,299 who have not been vaccinated.

In the newly eligible age group up to 4 years old, just 69 are fully vaccinated, compared with 187,164 not vaccinated.