What does the continuing summer COVID surge look like in Fresno, Valley? Here’s the data
An ongoing summer surge of new coronavirus infections have muscled the central San Joaquin Valley – Fresno, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, and Tulare counties – to more than a quarter million cases since the first patients in the region were identified almost 18 months ago.
An onslaught of almost 3,000 new cases since Friday in the Valley, including 1,648 in Fresno County alone, put the total number of people who have had COVID-19 at some point in the pandemic at 252,317 by Monday afternoon.
Of those patients, 3,691 have succumbed to the virus and the respiratory disease it causes, including 1,790 in Fresno County. The weekend brought confirmation by health officials of 20 deaths in Fresno County and 26 throughout the region.
Weekend and Monday updates from Valley counties included:
Fresno County: 627 cases on Saturday, 598 on Sunday and 423 on Monday, 10,863 since Aug. 1 and 115,502 since early March 2020; 20 deaths over Saturday, Sunday and Monday, 46 since Aug. 1 and 1,790 to date.
Kings County: 187 over Saturday and Sunday, 96 on Monday, 2,594 in August, 26,314 to date; two deaths since Friday, 13 since Aug. 1, 264 to date.
Madera County: 73 cases on Saturday, 39 on Sunday, 29 on Monday, 1,454 since Aug. 1, 18,489 to date; no deaths over the weekend, one in August, 250 to date.
Mariposa County: 22 cases since Friday, 303 in August, 803 to date; no deaths over the weekend, three in August, 10 to date.
Merced County: 121 cases on Saturday, 132 on Sunday, 135 on Monday, 3,099 so far in August, 36,740 to date; two deaths since Friday, 23 since Aug. 1, 508 to date.
Tulare County: 508 cases since Friday, 4,085 since Aug. 1, 54,523 to date; two deaths since Friday, 16 so far in August, 869 to date.
The weekend cases and deaths are the latest in a region in which COVID-19 vaccination rates lag the statewide average and numbers of the highly contagious delta variant – a strain that emerged last fall in India and has quickly spread around the world – are rising in the region.
Medical officials around the Valley report that a vast majority of the new cases are among people who have not been vaccinated with either the two-shot medications from Pfizer or Moderna or the one-dose regimen produced by Johnson & Johnson.
Hospitalizations for COVID-19
While many people who contract the virus may have either no symptoms or mild cases, this weekend’s spike is expected to send more people to seek treatment of more serious cases to hospitals across the Valley, further straining a medical-care system that doctors say is already being stretched to its limits.
The number of people hospitalized in Fresno County and Valleywide trickled lower over the weekend compared to mid-week last week. The California Department of Public Health reported that 402 people were in hospitals as of Sunday with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19 in Fresno County, down from 415 a few days earlier. But 87 seriously ill patients remained in intensive-care unit beds in hospitals around the county, up from fewer than 70 at the start of last week.
Valleywide, there were 725 patients hospitalized with suspected or confirmed coronavirus infections on Sunday, down from 750 at midweek. But as in Fresno County, ICUs across the region had more patients than a week earlier – 133 on Sunday, compared to 117 on Aug. 22.
Testing supplies strained
A growing number of agencies and organizations that are requiring their employees, and in some cases their customers, to show proof of vaccination or have negative coronavirus tests to come to work or attend events, has been creating a surge of demand for testing in the Valley.
Miguel Rodriguez, chief operations officer for United Health Centers, said his organization’s network of clinics has been doing about four times the number of tests that they were conducting in July. Rodriguez said UHC uses both PCR testing, in which nasal swabs are taken and sent for analysis with a one- to three-day turnaround for results, and antigen “rapid testing” that can provide results in under an hour but is considered less reliable than PCR testing.
“We’re running into some issues with the rapid supplies,” Rodriguez said. “In order for us to keep our staff working, we still need to have that dual testing to keep folks here before we put them out for three days” waiting for results.
Dr. Rais Vohra, interim health officer for Fresno County, said a shortage of testing supplies “was most likely foreseeable now that we are in a surge statewide and nationwide.”
Vohra said the Fresno County Department of Public Health received an email from state health officials “saying the supplies of our antigen cards – which are really handy tools – have basically been cut off for the time being.”
The message added that officials don’t know when that pipeline of supplies will be reopened, Vohra said.
“We were really depending on the state for providing those rapid antigen tests that can give you a diagnosis within 15 minutes,” Vohra added. “Not having that tool just really adds more pain to the whole system. … Our schools are using them, athletic teams are using them, all of our clinics are using them.”
“We haven’t heard of anybody totally running out” of the testing cards, Vohra said Friday, “although we’re anticipating that it might happen in the next few days if this pipeline and resource from the state isn’t turned back on.
Joe Prado, interim assistant director of the Fresno County Department of Public Health, said his agency has a limited number of the antigen rapid-testing cards. “We’re going to prioritize our small supply to our medical providers,” he said.
Neither Prado nor Vohra had an indication from the state on when supplies would begin flowing to counties again. But, Prado added, he expects that when the program resumes, “there will be limited allocations.”
This story was originally published August 30, 2021 at 1:26 PM with the headline "What does the continuing summer COVID surge look like in Fresno, Valley? Here’s the data."
