State Health Officials Lift Stay-At-Home Orders

State health officials on Monday lifted all regional stay-athome orders. Orange County will still be subject to the tight regulations of the restrictive “purple” tier of economic reopening guidelines.

All state prohibitions on outdoor dining, nail and hair salons, and other restrictions are now rescinded.

Orange County restaurants, gyms, and hair and nail salons can immediately reopen—at least outdoors in some cases—in a limited capacity.

The stay-at-home order on all Southern California counties was imposed Dec. 6 when intensivecare unit capacity dropped below 15 percent.

Everyone must wear a mask, said Gov. Gavin Newsom during a news conference on Monday.

State officials awknowledged that hospitalization numbers are moving downward, but fourweek projections indicate that ICU capacity will rise above the 15-percent threshold again.

Although the state order has been lifted, individual counties can still impose stricter restrictions than the state.

But in general, lifting the state order will allow outdoor dining and at least some services at gyms, barbershops and nail salons, among other businesses.

The news came as Orange County reported 1,330 new cases of COVID-19 and 66 additional deaths Tuesday, bringing the county’s totals to 224,618 cases and 2,704 fatalities since the pandemic began.

In Seal Beach, 1,009 cases have been reported.

An estimated 158,291 Orange County residents have recovered from coronavirus since the pandemic began last March, according to statistics compiled by the Orange County Health Care Agency (OCHCA).

As of Tuesday, there were 1,703 people hospitalized countywide with the disease, 447 of whom are in the intensive care unit. Those numbers are down dramatically from 1,818 and 482 on Saturday.

The county’s state-adjusted ICU bed availability remains zero, and the unadjusted figure decreased to 9.2 percent. The state created the adjusted metric to reflect the difference in beds available for COVID-19 patients and non-coronavirus patients. The county has 38 percent of its ventilators available.

The Southern California region remains at zero ICU availability.

OC’s seven-day test positivity rate remained unchanged at 16.7 percent, up from 14.5 percent on Friday.

It’s true that hospitalizations are down, ICUs are trending down and the case positivity is coming down, but the region’s numbers are still high compared to early November.

Vaccinations at the inaugural Super POD site at Disneyland continued after wind-driven closures Jan. 19-20. Leisure World held its first two vaccine clinics Jan. 18-19, with two more set for Jan. 30-31.

So far, the county has vaccinated more than 73,000, according to the OCHCA.

The county’s app and website, Othena, is functioning better after initial kinks were worked out.

As of Tuesday, 84,799 residents have scheduled vaccine appointments, and the app has logged about 464,584 registrants, according to news reports.

The county hopes to ultimately open up to five large-scale vaccination sites, but until supplies of vaccines are assured, it likely won’t happen.

Outbreaks at nursing homes —defined as two or more over the past two weeks—continue with 36 skilled nursing facilities reporting outbreaks and 49 elderly assisted-living facilities reporting an outbreak as of Jan. 21, according to a report in the Los Alamitos-Seal Beach Patch.

There are 15 Orange County residents being treated at Fairview Developmental Center in Costa Mesa, which was set up to handle overflow from local hospitals, and 11 patients from Los Angeles County.

Mobile field hospitals, which have been set up to help medical centers triage COVID-19 patients, are in operation at UC Irvine, which added 50 beds, Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center, 25 beds, and St. Jude’s Hospital in Fullerton with 52 beds, Kim said.

Officials are setting up or discussing mobile field hospitals at Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo and Los Alamitos Medical Center.