Coronavirus outbreak confirmed at Merced County Sheriff’s Office in Los Banos
For the second day in a row, no additional novel coronavirus-related deaths of Merced County residents were reported Thursday by the Merced County Department of Public Health.
The decrease in fatalities is notable for Merced County, as daily reports of local COVID-19 deaths had become commonplace during recent months.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, a total of 140 fatalities have been confirmed as COVID-19-related.
While known coronavirus deaths remained static on Thursday, Merced County’s list of active outbreaks also decreased, but not without the addition of a new outbreak.
The Merced County Sheriff’s Office in Los Banos joined nine other workplace locations experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks county-wide. La Sierra Care Center, a rehabilitation center, and The Hampshire Retirement Community were both cleared Thursday from active outbreak status.
Outbreaks are defined as three or more unrelated, laboratory confirmed COVID-19 cases connected to a workplace facility within two weeks. One positive case is enough to constitute an outbreak at a skilled nursing facility.
Outbreaks are closed and removed from the list when no new known cases are traced to the facility for 14 days.
Merced County residents currently hospitalized on account of COVID-19 also rose on Thursday to 40 — an increase of three patients. Ten of the patients are hospitalized at facilities within the county, with the majority cared for elsewhere.
The number of residents ever hospitalized because of coronavirus during the pandemic increased to 688.
Other COVID-19 data improving
Also on Thursday, 18 new laboratory confirmed coronavirus cases were added to Merced County’s running total. While not the lowest daily count in recent weeks, the new cases approached the lowest recent count of 14 on Sept. 14.
The new infections raised the county’s caseload since the pandemic’s start to 8,846.
However, of those total cases, 383 are presumed to be currently active — a decrease from 409 on Wednesday.
Active COVID-19 cases have not dipped below the 400 threshold since about June 24, according to County Public Health data.
The number of residents actively sick due to COVID-19, however, is an estimate based on the number of positive laboratory confirmed tests during the past two weeks.
Also indicative of the declining number of cases locally is the decreasing testing positivity rate. That data point shows the percentage of residents screened for COVID-19 over the past week whose tests return positive.
On Thursday, the testing positivity rate fell from 4.4% to 4%.
