The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Orange County surpassed 10,000 over the weekend, a grim reminder that the new coronavirus is on the march even as state and local officials relax pandemic rules and expand the types of businesses that may welcome customers back.
And while the local overall case count is growing, new numbers from the Health Care Agency indicate the county is backpedaling in some other key metrics used to measure the fight against the coronavirus.
Today, some of those numbers are creeping back to levels they were at a month ago, when state officials let the county re-open some public areas and some businesses were allowed to accept customers.
Critically, the county’s rate of so-called “positive” tests — meaning the number of people who are found to be infected after being tested for coronavirus — is higher today than it was a month ago.
For the week ending Friday, June 19, the county’s positive test rate was 5.26%, the highest level since late April. On May 22, a day before the state let Orange County enter Stage 2 of the re-opening plan, the positive test rate for the previous seven days was 3.54%.
The growth of those positive tests — which hint at a broader spread of the disease — has come as the state has let Orange County and most other counties expand from Stage 2 re-opening to Stage 3, which includes letting the public go back to bars, gyms and many public swimming facilities.
To remain open, the state wants counties to show a positive test rate of 8% or less. Orange County’s highest positive test rate came on April 9, at 7.75%.
The Orange County Health Care Agency on Sunday said the jump in new cases over the weekend that lifted Orange County above the 10,000-case mark was due to a backlog in test results.
For UC Irvine Public Health Professor Andrew Noymer, passing the 10,000-case mark is only psychologically significant.
“People seem to think round numbers are important,” he said. “Every case is a grim line.”
There were 10,595 known COVID-19 cases in Orange County as of Monday — 269 people have died. The Orange County Health Care Agency estimates that 5,075 — about half of known cases — have recovered.
Because testing has been limited, the number of confirmed cases is an undercount of the actual number of people who have, or have had, the disease. Public health experts have suspected that there are many more times the official numbers of COVID-19 cases, especially among people who were infected but showed no symptoms.
Data fluctuation also has made it difficult for researchers to study the coronavirus pandemic as it unfolds. Figures posted on the Health Care Agency’s public COVID-19 database shift daily as information is added and adjusted.
Because of this, analyses using the most recent data quickly become outdated.
For example, in a report to state health officials on May 21, Dr. Nichole Quick, the county’s health officer at the time, attested that Orange County fell just below the state’s requirement at 7.95% testing positivity between May 13 and May 19. But later analysis showed that the county actually fared better than that. Between May 13 and May 19, 4.41% of tests came back positive, lower than Quick’s original calculation, and that it dipped further, to 3.54%, by May 22.
On its tracking site, the county Health Care Agency notes: “It’s important to look at trends over time when reviewing these data rather than drawing conclusions from any individual data points.”
Generally, the growth of cases in Orange County has been slow compared to other parts of the country. Still, Noymer noted the recent local trend isn’t good.
“There’s no strict dictionary definition of a surge,” he said. “But we are growing.”
Noymer added that it’s difficult at this point to blame faster growth of new cases over the past couple of weeks on Stage 2 business re-openings without knowing how the rest of the pandemic will play out.
The state Department of Public Health is monitoring counties that have recorded recent surges in new coronavirus cases and hospitalizations.
Orange County is not on the state’s watch list, but other counties in Southern California, including Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino, are being monitored due to elevated case rates per 100,000 residents or testing positivity above 8%.
Like Orange County, the state cleared the three other counties through Stage 2 of its re-opening plan.
