O.C. health director warns ‘We will see more younger people die from COVID’ without vaccines

While county officials are hopeful about a recent downward trend of new coronavirus infection rates, a steady climb in COVID-19 hospitalizations — particularly among younger residents — has public health leaders banging the drum for more to get vaccinated.

Orange County Health Care Agency Director Dr. Clayton Chau convened a news briefing Friday, during which he explained young people are now more likely to be hospitalized from the virus than their elderly counterparts, in large part because those 65 and older are more likely to have been vaccinated.

Agency data show 93% of county residents aged 65 to 74 have received at least one dose of the vaccine, compared to just 65% of residents aged 25 to 34. Hospitals are now reporting the average age of COVID-19 patients are between 35 and 45.

Three more Orange County residents under age 35 reportedly died from the disease this week. Chau said his heart goes out to their families but added this could be the beginning of a new reality.

“The demographics of those who’ve ended up in the hospital is now skewed toward a younger group,” he said. “We’ve done a very good job in vaccinating our seniors. [But] we will see more younger people who are in the hospital. We will see more younger people die from COVID.”

Countywide, about 1.99 million of the county’s 3.2 million residents, or about 61.2%, have been fully vaccinated, while another 240,000 have received the first of a two-dose regimen.

While that shows a steady increase over time, it does not meet the basic herd immunity thresholds, let alone the higher thresholds needed to stave off more virulent strains of the virus, which seem to be making young people sicker.

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As more Orange County children head back to in-person classes, health officials are bracing themselves for the possibility of a resultant spike in new infections in the week ahead. Chau said Friday his agency receives on average, reports of about 70 new cases from schools each week.

“Perhaps transmission in children is low, but when they do get sick, they get very sick,” he said, adding that even among pediatric COVID-19 patients, most come from families where adults are unvaccinated.

“I have a suspicion we will see a rise in cases in our children before there is a plateau,” Chau added.

In the weeks ahead, the Health Care Agency will work with school districts to provide contract tracing for all infections reported among students to determine whether transmissions are happening among the wide community or on school grounds.

Dr. Christopher Zimmerman, OCHA’s public health medical director, said employing such a process last school year provided valuable information about how and where kids were catching the virus.

“Most of the cases we saw in school-aged children were due to outside-of-school exposures and not in the schools,” he said. “That was information that allowed the state to feel comfortable it was safe to open schools.”

For schools to continue to remain open, health experts are urging children to follow state guidelines by remaining masked while indoors. The California Department of Public Health on Monday issued a statement to school leaders emphasizing the requirement for mandatory universal masking indoors on K-12 campuses.

“Unfortunately, some elected officials and school leaders have expressed their intent to violate the law, and risk their students’ safety, by failing to enforce the universal mask requirement,” the statement read. “[That] breaches not only a legal duty, but also the first and foremost duty of every school leader — to protect students.”

The Health Care Agency on Friday recorded 930 new coronavirus cases and five deaths. Of the new infections, 185 were reported among children under 18. Among children over 12, who are old enough to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, about 60.5% have done so.

“Help me. Help us. Help the community — stress the importance for people to get the vaccine,” Chau told reporters. “Behind Delta, there will be variants that possibly could be more virulent if we don’t take this seriously, if we don’t ensure people truly get vaccinated.”

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