Orange County to resume administering Johnson & Johnson vaccine

Orange County plans to resume its use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine beginning Sunday, May 2, county health officials announced Thursday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had previously recommended a pause in administering the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after a rare blood clot was discovered in six women between the ages of 18 and 48.

“Community members are strongly encouraged to get vaccinated as soon as possible to help slow the spread of this virus,” Dr. Clayton Chau, director of the Orange County Health Care Agency and the county health officer, said in a prepared statement.

“The County now offers three FDA-authorized vaccines that patients can select from when scheduling an appointment — Pfizer, Moderna and J&J — so that individuals have a variety of options to choose from. All vaccines are proven to be highly effective at preventing hospitalization or death from COVID-19.”

Last week, the county also made the decision to close its Disneyland drive-through vaccination Super POD (point of distribution) on Friday, April 30, when the amusement park reopened to the public. County officials estimated that 233,000 vaccine doses will have been administered at the site from its Jan. 13 start date to its closure.

“I want to remind the community that our Soka University, Santa Ana College, and the OC Fair and Event Center Super PODs currently offer ADA-compliant drive-through lanes to continue meeting the needs of individuals with disabilities,” Chau said in an announcement about the Disneyland vaccination site closure on April 23. “We’re not going away — we’re just balancing the changing needs of eligible patients with our staffing and vaccine allocations to ensure we can be as responsive as possible.”

Vaccination appointments can be made by visiting othena.com.

Orange County reported nine coronavirus deaths and 68 new infections of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, in Friday’s updated numbers.

There have been 4,957 deaths countywide attributed to a bout with the virus, and the cumulative case count in the county is 253,848.

Hospitalizations resulting from the virus were at 113, with 22 of those patients being treated in intensive care units. The county also reported 10,798 tests for the virus on Friday, bringing the total number of tests administered to 3,657,088.

Orange County, which is in the orange tier (moderate transmission), had an adjusted daily case rate of 2.6 cases per 100,000 residents as of Tuesday. To meet the yellow-tier criteria for that metric, a county must have less than two daily new cases per 100,000 residents.

The county also has a testing positivity rate of 1.4% and a health equity quartile positivity rate of 1.9%. All three metrics are tracked as seven-day averages with a seven-day lag.

Here are the latest cumulative coronavirus case counts and COVID-19 deaths for select cities in Orange County:

• Santa Ana: 44,783 cases; 849 deaths
• Anaheim: 41,841 cases; 865 deaths
• Huntington Beach: 10,752 cases; 216 deaths
• Costa Mesa: 8,987 cases; 137 deaths
• Irvine: 10,662 cases; 86 deaths
• Newport Beach: 3,871 cases; 75 deaths
• Fountain Valley: 3,514 cases; 85 deaths
• Laguna Beach: 855 cases; seven deaths

Here are the case counts by age group, followed by deaths:

• 0 to 17: 26,564 cases; one death
• 18 to 24: 35,172 cases; 10 deaths
• 25 to 34: 50,673 cases; 53 deaths
• 35 to 44: 39,455 cases; 107 deaths
• 45 to 54: 40,613 cases; 315 deaths
• 55 to 64: 31,941 cases; 705 deaths
• 65 to 74: 15,813 cases; 956 deaths
• 75 to 84: 8,019 cases; 1,229 deaths
• 85 and older: 5,423 cases; 1,581 deaths

Updated figures are posted daily at occovid19.ochealthinfo.com/coronavirus-in-oc. Information on COVID-19 vaccines in Orange County can be found at occovid19.ochealthinfo.com/covid-19-vaccine-resources.

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