Deadly weekend in Fresno, Valley. COVID delta surge fuels grim milestones for region

A spate of more than 1,600 new coronavirus infections reported over the weekend has pushed Fresno County past 115,000 laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19 over past 18 months as of Monday morning.

Twenty additional fatalities attributed to the virus and its respiratory disease since Friday also drove the death toll to nearly 1,800 in Fresno County since the first local case in the global pandemic was reported in early March 2020.

The cases were among 2,990 reported on Saturday, Sunday and Monday in Fresno, Kings,Madera, Mariposa, Merced and Tulare counties – a tally that sent the regional total for the central San Joaquin Valley to more than a quarter million people with laboratory-confirmed cases of coronavirus in a year and a half.

In Fresno County, nearly 13% of all of the confirmed COVID-19 cases to date have been reported just since July 1, in the weeks after California reopened its economy and eliminated its risk-based, color-coded system of county-by-county restrictions on businesses and activities aimed at curbing the spread of the virus.

That’s about the same time that the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus – a strain that first surfaced in India last fall – was on its way to becoming the dominant strain of the virus in California and the U.S. More than 98% of the positive COVID-19 tests processed in August in California and submitted for genomic sequencing were associated with the delta variant, according to the state Department of Public Health.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimates that nationwide, the delta variant was responsible for more than 99% of all new coronavirus cases reported over the two-week period ending Aug. 21.

Valleywide, cases reported since July 1 account for just over 12% of all coronavirus infections to date.

This story was originally published August 30, 2021 at 11:20 AM with the headline "Deadly weekend in Fresno, Valley. COVID delta surge fuels grim milestones for region."

Tim Sheehan

The Fresno Bee

559-441-6319

Lifelong Valley resident Tim Sheehan has worked as a reporter and editor in the region since 1986, and has been with The Fresno Bee since 1998. He is currently The Bee’s data reporter and also covers California’s high-speed rail project and other transportation issues. He grew up in Madera, has a journalism degree from Fresno State and a master’s degree in leadership studies from Fresno Pacific University. Support my work with a digital subscription