COVID-19 hospitalizations tick up in OC, but ICU numbers drop

Andrew Noymer, a UC Irvine [associate] professor of population health and disease prevention, said the one-day increase is “just a bit of noise” and likely insignificant, though he stressed that hospitalization rates are the key metric for the public to watch for. “As cases fall and testing goes up the case rates can be deceptively misleading,” Noymer said. “The hospitalizations is what you really want to look for and they’re going in the right direction.”