Coronavirus updates: A first look at Fresno’s emergency hospital; A 10th death in Tulare County
An outbreak of the coronavirus at a Visalia nursing facility has claimed the lives of two people.
The County of Tulare Public Health Branch confirmed the deaths Wednesday night. Both people were over 65 years old and residents at Redwood Springs Healthcare Center, the Visalia Times-Delta reported. A third death, not related to the nursing home, was confirmed in a Wednesday morning update by the county health department.
On Thursday morning, the county’s health and human services agency confirmed a 10th death in Tulare County.
Health officials first announced community spread transmission of the coronavirus on Saturday. It is being seen in clusters around the county, including at Redwood Springs. The nursing home outbreak, originally counted as eight people, has ballooned to some 60 cases — more than half of the total cases in Visalia.
Easter weekend, vehicle parades
In Fresno County, health officials confirmed 10 new cases of the coronavirus Wednesday, bringing the total number of positive cases to 156. The county’s interim health officer, Dr.. Rais Vohra, puts the current infection rate for the virus at 5% to 6%.
Vohra also urged people to adjust their Easter celebrations, calling gatherings “dangerous.” One COVID-19 infected person could spark an infection cluster by attending a gathering, Vohra said.
“This year, we’re going to need to make some changes in all the different traditions that we have, and all the different ways that we celebrate holidays,” he said.
Fresno County and the cities of Fresno and Clovis have restricted park access for the weekend holiday. Fresno County and the city completely closed their parks. Clovis is cutting off access to playgrounds, picnic areas and exercise equipment.
Fresno’s stay-at-home order states that local churches should close, that “no congregations of people” should gather, but allows the churches to continue broadcasting, along with providing counseling and relief services. This has forced churches to reworked their Easter services and cancel events like Easter egg hunts.
Officials from both Fresno and Madera counties are discouraging the vehicle celebration parades that many, especially teachers, have been staging. Instead, he recommended video celebrations.
Emergency beds arrive in Fresno
The national guard delivered and set up about 265 beds at the exhibit hall in the Fresno convention center on Wednesday. The beds will assist regional hospitals to handle mounting cases of COVID-19.
For now, the exhibit hall will serve as a temporary storage unit. As needed, beds will be going to hospitals in Fresno and other central San Joaquin Valley counties, officials announced at a news conference Thursday. The exhibit hall will also be used as a makeshift hospital to treat non-COVID-19 patients if and when coronavirus cases surge in the coming weeks.
Online learning tricky for student-parents
As Fresno State transitions to online education, many students are feeling overwhelmed by the changing workloads. This is particularly felt by the university’s student-parents.
“Our student parents are definitely feeling overwhelmed,” said Larissa Mercado-López, an associate professor of women’s studies at Fresno State, who is helping advise faculty on how they can best keep student parents enrolled and learning.
“They’re trying to figure out how to navigate four to six different approaches to online learning for each of their classes. Some struggle with narrow time windows that they’ve been given to complete exams or to turn homework.
“This is a time for radical flexibility and radical compassion,” she said.
At nearly a quarter of the population, student parents are one of Fresno State’s largest demographics.
An a Amazon warehouse employee tests positive
Workers at Amazon’s Fresno warehouses said an employee there has tested positive for COVID-19, according to a text message sent to all warehouse workers Wednesday evening. The employee was last at the warehouse on March 9, according to the message.
It remains unclear whether the employee contracted the virus before or after that day, but an Amazon spokesperson said whenever an employee tests positive, the company immediately notifies the rest of the staff. All employees diagnosed with COVID-19 or placed into quarantine will receive up to two weeks of paid time off. Employees may also take unlimited unpaid time off, according to the company.
Live forum: Rebuilding the California workforce
OnwardCA.org and the McClatchy newspapers in Fresno, Sacramento, Modesto, Merced and San Luis Obispo, will host an online forum on Thursday to offer perspectives on how California can rebuild its workforce after hundreds of thousands of workers across the state have lost or will lose their jobs.
The forum will stream live from noon to 1 p.m. at fresnobee.com and the four other newspapers’ websites, as well as their Facebook pages.
Confirmed participants are California Secretary of Labor Julie Su; Jake Soberal, co-CEO and co-founder of Fresno-based technology firm Bitwise Industries; and Cedric Brown, chief foundation officer for The Kapor Center, a technology nonprofit in Oakland. Bitwise and Kapor are two of the collaborators who developed OnwardCA.org, a new website that offers a wealth of employment and emergency aid resources for people who are looking for new jobs.
Health care workers make up 10% of state’s coronavirus cases
The California Department of Public Health reported Wednesday that 1,651 confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been among health care workers. That is 10 percent of the state’s confirmed cases.
“Since COVID-19 is moving rapidly within the community, health care workers now appear just as likely, if not more so, to become infected by COVID-19 outside the workplace,” CDPH leaders said in the report.
To date, close to 300 health care workers acquired COVID-19 in a health care setting, 462 health care workers were exposed via travel, close contacts, or community transmission. For nearly 900, a specific exposure source has not been reported.
Another Chowchilla prison worker tests positive
An employee at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla tested positive for the coronavirus, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Last week the CDCR announced a worker at Valley State Prison, the men’s facility in Chowchilla, tested positive for COVID-19 and an employee at the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison in Corcoran tested positive just two weeks ago. A total of 62 CDCR employees have a confirmed case of the coronavirus based on its latest update Wednesday.
This story was originally published April 9, 2020 at 9:35 AM.