UC Irvine launches coronavirus statistics portal to track Orange County cases, compare other counties

A new coronavirus statistics portal tracking current data and trends in Orange County and providing comparisons to neighboring counties has launched, UC Irvine announced Monday.

The website was built and maintained by doctorate students Damon Bayer, Isaac Goldstein and Rachel Longjohn, in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences’ Department of Statistics. It filters data from the California Open Data Portal to provide information on current hospitalized COVID-19 patients, intensive care unit patients, new daily cases and new daily deaths.

Data is tracked across a seven-day moving average, which can highlight trends more clearly as opposed to using raw, daily numbers that can fluctuate between positive and negative dramatically.

Charts compare how Orange County is faring compared to Alameda, Los Angeles, San Diego and Santa Clara counties.

The Orange County Health Care Agency reported Thursday another 348 new cases and 24 deaths, bringing the total number of cases to 42,171 and 769 respectively. Of the deaths reported, three were skilled nursing facility residents; two assisted living facility residents and 19 residents not living in a facility.

Of the cases, 438 are currently hospitalized and 143 are in intensive care units. According to the agency, 32,984 cases have recovered.

“There is no shortage of COVID-19-related data visualizations out in the world, but what has been lacking is a platform for easy visualization and comparison of trends in California’s counties,” said Vladimir Minin, a UCI professor of statistics who led the team responsible for designing and creating the site, in a statement.

“Every county reports its coronavirus stats, but useful knowledge can be gained by holding up the numbers against other counties and normalizing by population size, which is what we have done,” Minin said. “For example, Southern California residents may think that Los Angeles County is still an outlier in terms of being affected by the coronavirus spread, but the displayed trends clearly show that L.A. and Orange counties recently have become much closer to each other in some of the COVID-19 metrics.”

The team plans on adding testing tallies and increasing county comparisons. The agency reported 13,506 tests on Thursday, bringing the total to 518,065.

Included in the portal are maps that document cases, tests and positivity rates throughout Orange County, produced by UCI assistant professor of public health Daniel Parker, using data from March through July to show spatial patterns of growth.

“What we’re doing is really simple from a technological standpoint,” said collaborator Padhraic Smyth, a chancellor’s professor of computer science, in a statement, “but we felt that it was important to provide this type of data to individuals and the public in general to help inform their decision-making.”

Orange County has not left the state’s coronavirus watch list.

The county reported 29% of ICU beds and 65% of ventilators are currently available, both above the state’s required minimums.

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

• Santa Ana: 8,183 cases; 202 deaths
• Anaheim: 7,186 cases; 180 deaths
• Huntington Beach: 1,878 cases; 56 deaths
• Costa Mesa: 1,377 cases; 14 deaths
• Irvine: 1,290 cases; 12 deaths
• Newport Beach: 930 cases; 14 deaths
• Fountain Valley: 399 cases; 8 deaths
• Laguna Beach: 149 cases; less than five deaths

And here are case counts followed by deaths, by age group:

• 0 to 17: 2,747 cases; zero deaths
• 18 to 24: 6,296 cases; three deaths
• 25 to 34: 9,334 cases; 11 deaths
• 35 to 44: 6,821 cases; 25 deaths
• 45 to 54: 6,899 cases; 68 deaths
• 55 to 64: 5,091 cases; 100 deaths
• 65 to 74: 2,467 cases; 154 deaths
• 75 to 84: 1,401 cases; 171 deaths
• 85 and older: 1,095 cases; 237 deaths

By race/ethnicity:

• Latino: 9,876 cases; 324 deaths
• White: 5,978 cases; 237 deaths
• Asian: 1,781 cases; 108 deaths
• Black: 301 cases; 12 deaths
• Unknown: 19,543 cases; 12 deaths
• Other (includes Pacific Islander, American Indian and multiple races): 4,692 cases; 76 deaths

Updated figures are posted daily at occovid19.ochealthinfo.com/coronavirus-in-oc. For information on getting tested, visit occovid19.ochealthinfo.com/covid-19-testing.

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