Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By Dawn Burleigh

Latest numbers for COVID-19 were released on Wednesday and show the numbers are still rising.

The number of active cases in Orange County is up by 235 when comparing 1410 from this week to 1175 last week. A total of 2821 persons have recovered from the virus, up 180 from the previous week.

A grand total of 4276 person in Orange County have had the virus. The numbers reflect 415 more than the previous week.

The number of persons in the hospital due to COVID rose by 12 since last week bring the number to 20. Three persons are on ventilators.

Steward Health Care, Medical Center of Southeast Texas, began its preparations to safely and efficiently receive, store, distribute and administer the COVID-19 vaccine months ago. These preparations included the procurement of deep freezers and development of proprietary IT software designed to facilitate scheduling health care personnel to receive vaccines in a physically distanced manner.