Merced County leads state in new COVID cases, total deaths rise to 423

The Merced County Department of Public Health reported two new COVID-19 deaths and 144 new cases on Monday, bringing the total number of fatalities and cases to 423 and 29,940 respectively since the start of the pandemic.

The latest deaths were a man and woman, both over age 65. At least one had an underlying health condition, according to Merced County Public Health.

According to the Los Angeles Times COVID data tracker, Merced County is currently No. 1 among 58 counties in the state for new cases, with 156.1. new cases per 100,000 people in the last seven days. Nearby Stanislaus County is No. 4, according to the LAT data tracker.

There are an estimated 793 county residents who are actively infected as of Monday — a decrease of 32 cases since Friday, according to County Public Health.

The number of residents hospitalized in Merced County due to the coronavirus as of Monday is 19, one less person than Friday.

There were about eight people in the ICU and eight remaining ICU beds as of Sunday, according to the state.

Merced County has a positivity rate of 6.4%, indicating the level of people among those tested who had a positive result. That’s an increase from 5.6% Friday.

Currently, Merced County is one of 21 counties in the state to remain in purple tier while 37 others have moved into the red, orange or yellow tiers under the state’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy. Some of those 21 are expected to move into the red tier when the state announces new assignments Tuesday.

Of the 21 counties in purple, Merced County has 14 cases per 100,000 residents, behind No. 1 Inyo County (29.4 per 100,000). Stanislaus County has the state’s third worst adjusted case rate of 13.6 cases per 100,000 residents.

Merced County needs to reach and sustain at least 10 cases per 100,000 population before it can move into red tier.

Counties must also meet a threshold of less than 8% of residents tested for COVID-19 returning positive results over a seven-day period. Counties must meet or beat both the case-rate and testing positivity benchmarks for two straight weeks to be promoted to the red tier.

Health officials in Merced County have administered 56,111 doses of the vaccine, according to the state.

California has 3,528,795 confirmed cases to date, according to the California Department of Health. There were 2,460 newly recorded cases through Sunday.

There have been 55,330 COVID-19 deaths statewide since the start of the pandemic.

Other county updates

Tulare County reported 54 new cases of the coronavirus on Monday, the first report since Friday. The total number of cases there is 48,604 since the pandemic began. The total number of deaths remained unchanged at 784.

Fresno County stands at 97,461 cases since the pandemic began a year ago, according to state numbers. The number of deaths is now 1,535, according to local numbers.

Stanislaus County: 972 deaths, 51,706 confirmed infections, 49,980 recovered since the beginning of the pandemic.

Kings County totaled 22,380 cases on Monday, which is 27 more than the last update on Saturday. A new death pushed the total to 236.

Madera County reported 15,804 cases on Monday, which is 43 more than the previous day, according to state numbers.

Mariposa County has seen 396 cases and seven deaths.

The Fresno and Modesto Bee contributed to this story.

This story was originally published March 15, 2021 at 6:25 PM.