Merced County reports 7 COVID deaths, 500 cases through Presidents’ Day holiday weekend
The Merced County Department of Public Health reported seven new COVID-19 related deaths on Tuesday, bringing the total to 383 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
Tuesday was the first day Merced County provided a COVID-19 statistic update since Thursday due to the Presidents’ Day holiday weekend.
Of the new deaths, all seven were men, with five over the age of 65 and the other two between the ages of 50 and 64. At least three of the deceased was known to have underlying health conditions.
Merced County also reported 500 new confirmed COVID-19 cases, raising the total number of residents who have been infected by the virus to 28,201.
There are 1,400 Merced County residents estimated to be actively infected — a drop of 263 cases since Thursday.
The number of residents hospitalized in Merced County due to the coronavirus is 32 — an decrease of five cases since Thursday — with 12 people in the ICU.
According to the state, Merced County hospitals had two ICU beds remaining as of Tuesday.
Merced County currently has a positivity rate of 7.5%, meaning the level of people among those who’ve been tested who had a positive result. That’s a decrease from 10.5% a week ago.
California receiving boost in vaccines
California will receive about 23% more first doses next week than this week, according to Tuesday allocation updates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The state is set to get about 383,000 first doses of Pfizer, an increase by 141,000 from this week, while Moderna doses will be steady at about 380,000.
Those 763,000 first doses will be accompanied by about 485,000 shots shipped as second doses, for a total of about 1.25 million, 13% more than this week’s 1.1 million.
The California Department of Public Health on its vaccine tracker reported Tuesday providers have administered 6,262,781 of the 8.25 million doses distributed to hospital systems and health offices, an increase by 751,352 since last Friday for an average of about 188,000 shots per day.
Merced County has vaccinated 18,775 residents, accounting for roughly 3.3% of the population of 287,420, according to statistics provided by the County Department of Health.
Tier Tuesday updates
Fresno, Kings, Madera, Merced and Tulare counties on Tuesday remained assigned to purple Tier 1 of California’s color-coded Blueprint for a Safer Economy, a sliding scale of criteria for reopening businesses and social activities from measures aimed at limiting spread of the coronavirus in a county.
Tier 1 is the most restrictive of the four tiers, and represents “widespread” risk of community transmission based on a rate of more than seven new cases each day for every 100,000 residents in a county and more than 8% of people tested whose results come back positive for the infection.
Merced County reported a daily new-case rate of 29.5 per 100,000 residents on Tuesday. To move from the purple tier to red, a county needs to meet or beat the thresholds for both new daily cases and testing positivity and remain below those level thresholds for two consecutive weeks before the lower restrictions take effect.
In the purple tier, restaurants, gyms and other kinds of businesses are officially restricted to outdoor services only, although some businesses in Fresno, Clovis and elsewhere in the Valley have opened for indoor operations in defiance of the state-ordered limitations.
Mariposa County remains in red Tier 2, denoting “substantial” risk of viral transmission. In the red tier, restaurants and other businesses can offer indoor dining or indoor operations with limits on how many people are allowed inside.
Statewide, 52 of California’s 58 counties are in purple Tier 1.
Around the Valley
Tuesday coronavirus updates from counties in the central San Joaquin Valley included:
Fresno County: 166 new cases Tuesday, 1,053 since Friday, and 93,231 to date; no additional deaths, 1,291 to date.
Stanislaus County reported six deaths on Tuesday, bringing the total deaths to 905 since the start of the pandemic. There were 138 cases reported on Tuesday, raising the total to 49,128.
Kings County: 11 new cases Tuesday, 125 since Friday, 21,658 to date; one additional death Tuesday, four since Friday, 209 to date.
Madera County: 98 new cases since Friday, 15,064 to date; 12 additional deaths since Feb. 9, 201 to date.
Mariposa County: No new cases Tuesday, two since Friday, 388 to date; two additional deaths reported Monday, seven to date.
Tulare County: 220 new cases since Friday, 46,934 to date; six additional deaths, 697 to date.
Valleywide, the cumulative number of people who have tested positive for COVID-19 over the past year has exceeded 205,000, while the death toll from the virus approaches 2,800.
The Fresno Bee and Sacramento Bee contributed to this story.
