Merced County COVID-19 deaths this week rise to seven, active cases up
The novel coronavirus has taken the lives of two additional local residents, the Merced County Department of Public Health confirmed on Thursday.
The death count has reached 162 since the pandemic’s beginning with the addition of the latest fatalities. Seven COVID-19-caused fatalities were reported this week.
Both of the deaths reported Thursday were men who had underlying health conditions, according to County Public Health. One of the individuals was between 50-64-years-old and the other was age 65 or older.
On Wednesday, new laboratory confirmed COVID-19 cases reported in a single day spiked to the highest daily count since Sept. 4 with 61 new infections. Thursday’s additional cases were back down to 36.
The decrease was on trend with recent daily case reports, but still higher than weeks in the near past when new daily infections tallied in the teens and 20s.
The 36 new infections raised the total number of infected residents since the pandemic’s beginning to 9,916.
If new COVID-19 cases continue to be confirmed at a similar rate, Merced County could pass 10,000 known total infections in just a couple days.
The uptick in laboratory confirmed infections has led to a proportional increase in the amount of cases presumed to be active. Active cases are calculated via the number of new known infections during the past two weeks.
Active cases increased again on Thursday to 477. The active case count has not reached tallies this high since mid-to-late September.
Increasing concern for the state of COVID-19 transmission in Merced County is also indicated in the county’s rising testing positivity, which increased to 3.9% on Thursday from 3.4% Wednesday. Testing positivity shows the percentage of residents screened for COVID-19 during the past week who test positive.
Testing positivity is one of the key metrics looked at by the state to organize counties into one of four tiers with varying levels of reopening rules.
Merced County during recent weeks has been grouped into the second strictest tier, which is characterized as having substantial risk of COVID-19 transmission.
Although Merced County’s testing positivity has consistently risen recently, it is still within the threshold to move forward into the next tier. Other local data is less strong, however. As of the most recent update on Wednesday, new cases per 100,000 individuals tallied 5.2.
To advance into the next stage, counties must have a rate of new cases and percentages of positive tests fewer than four per 100,000 residents and less than 5% of residents’ COVID-19 tests returning positive.
More on latest COVID-19 data
On Thursday local COVID-19 hospitalizations declined by one patient to 31. Nine of those individuals are hospitalized locally. The remaining patients are cared for at outside facilities.
The number of residents ever hospitalized due to the pandemic rose by one patient to 718.
Active COVID-19 outbreaks remained at 13, with no changes to the outbreak location list. Workplaces are cleared from the list when no additional laboratory confirmed cases are reported for two weeks.
As of Thursday, 65,742 residents have been tested for the novel coronavirus. Of all those tests, 15.28% of results have returned positive.
