Orange County is in its third straight week of surging COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations, but health officials hope they’ll soon see a swift decline in cases as did South Africa and other countries where the omicron variant first hit, county officials said in a Tuesday, Jan. 18, press conference.
Even though COVID-19 is having less of an impact on hospitals than it did in last winter’s surge, the county health system is “really overtaxed” right now because more health care workers are sick or in quarantine after exposure to the virus, OC Health Care Agency Director Dr. Clayton Chau said.
New case numbers and the case rate per 100,000 residents are some of the highest ever – the 15 children hospitalized with COVID-19 in OC now is the largest number of the entire pandemic.
However, “I’m hoping that we are in a stabilizing condition,” Chau said, adding, “if we have any indication from the experience of other countries from around the world, once omicron dropped off, it dropped off really rapidly.”
The county and state are helping some OC hospitals manage staff shortages, and more home tests – which have been difficult to get for several weeks – will soon be available from the federal government, Chau said.
Streamed live on Facebook, the briefing was the first of what are planned to be regular press conferences for the media and the public. It was held at the behest of District 4 Supervisor Doug Chaffee, who became chairman of the Board of Supervisors this month.
Monday’s topic was a COVID-19 update, but Chaffee said future events will highlight county initiatives to address mental health, criminal justice reform and other issues.
“My idea is to promote the county whenever we can, show what we’re doing,” he said in an interview Monday.
Chaffee said he plans to hold the press conferences on most Tuesdays when the board doesn’t meet, which would be twice a month.
Soon after the pandemic began, then-Chairwoman Michelle Steel began holding COVID-19 briefings with OC Health Care Agency officials that were livestreamed. When District 1 Supervisor Andrew Do took over as chair, he didn’t continue the practice.
When Katrina Foley was elected to the District 2 seat in March 2021, she launched her own online COVID-19 updates.
Chaffee said that although the health agency posts case counts, hospital numbers and other COVID-19 data online, “it”s better received” when the media can ask questions and there’s more time to explain the data to the public.
The press briefings will be streamed live or can be replayed later on the OC government Facebook page, facebook.com/ocgov.
