Tulare County has 15 new coronavirus cases, including several more at area nursing home

The number of positive cases of coronavirus in Tulare County jumped by more than a dozen Thursday.

In a morning online video briefing, the Tulare County Health and Human Services Agency announced 15 new cases of the virus, bringing the total number of positive cases in the county to 74. Included in that number are several residents of Redwood Springs Healthcare Center, a 176-bed skilled nursing facility.

On Wednesday, the facility announced that six residents and two staff members had tested positive for COVID-19.

Demographic ages on the new patients, along with how they contracted the virus, was not released — though the agency public information officer Tammie Weyker-Adkins said there was a mix of ages and that at least some of the cases were travel-related.

So far, the Tulare County Public Health Lab has tested 860 people. Of those 704 are from Tulare County. The remaining are from surrounding counties, Weyker-Adkins said. The total number of tests in the county could be higher now that several commercial labs have and are doing testing. The health agency is only notified by those labs if a test is positive.