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SANTA ANA (CNS) - Orange County's COVID-19 hospitalizations remained about the same as last week, but the county logged 45 more related fatalities, doubling the death toll for January, according to the latest data released by the Orange County Health Care Agency.
As of Friday, there were 178 patients hospitalized with COVID-related illnesses with 21 being treated in intensive care. Both numbers were up slightly from earlier in the week.
The agency logged 45 more fatalities, increasing the death toll to 7,893. Forty-two of those fatalities occurred last month, increasing January's death toll to 84. Three of the fatalities occurred in December, raising its death toll to 144.
December is the first month with triple-digit deaths since the summer wave. On two of the dates, 10 people died, marking the first time there were days of double-digit deaths since last February.
Of those hospitalized in the county, 62.6% are unvaccinated or partly vaccinated. The ICU patients are 63.7% partly vaccinated or unvaccinated.
The number of residents fully vaccinated increased from 2,366,484 to 2,367,020. The number of residents who have received at least one dose is 225,827. The number of booster shots administered increased from 1,446,607 to 1,447,774.
The number of children up to 4 years old who have received at least one dose inched up from 18,416 to just 18,534 with 11,640 fully vaccinated. Just 6.2% of the county's population in the age group is fully vaccinated.
For 5- to 11-year-old children, 97,431 are fully vaccinated, about 36.8% of the age group. In the 12-to-17 age group, 69.6% are fully vaccinated.
The test positivity rate went from 6.3% to 6.1% and increased from 6.3% to 7.1% in the health equity quartile, which measures the communities hardest hit by the pandemic.
The positivity rate for those fully vaccinated with a booster, which was 4.3 on Jan. 22, increased to 4.6 on Jan. 29. For those vaccinated with no booster, the rate went from 4.1 to 3.9. For those not vaccinated the rate went from 8.2 to 7.7.
The daily case rate per 100,000 went from 5.0 to 5.2 on a seven-day average with a seven-day lag, and from 5.1 to 4.9 in the adjusted daily case rate per 100,000 on a seven-day average with a seven-day lag.
The county logged 1,443 new cases of COVID-19, hiking the cumulative to 708,451.
The OCHCA reports COVID-19 data every Thursday.