Rising COVID-19 deaths in Fresno prompt renewed call for public to ‘do the right thing’
As the number of deaths blamed on the novel coronavirus grows in Fresno and the central San Joaquin Valley, Fresno County’s top health official warned Friday of the potential to jeopardize progress that the county and the region have made against the COVID-19 pandemic.
Through the first 12 days of June, 33 Valley residents have lost their lives to the virus, and more than half of those deaths were in Fresno County. The county’s Department of Public Health reported the 17th death of the month on Friday, bringing to 52 the number of fatalities blamed on the contagion in Fresno County since the first coronavirus cases were confirmed in early March.
“The number of fatalities from COVID-19, just according to the registered death certificates that we process here in the county, is accelerating,” Fresno County interim health officer Dr. Rais Vohra said Friday. “And I think that is a significant trend that we need to pay attention to.”
The concern comes as county and state health officials brace for a potential second wave of COVID-19 infections as soon as July as businesses reopen and people resume more of their pre-pandemic activities, increasing their potential exposure to infection.
“These are important numbers, and the whole community needs to understand,” Vohra added. “Just because as we do open up a lot of our sectors, we need people to understand that we want safety to be foremost in everyone’s mind.”
“We’re hoping we have a community that wants to do the right thing,” he said.
Valley counties experienced 51 COVID-19 deaths in April, or an average of about 1.7 fatalities each day. The 81 deaths reported in May across the six-county region amounted to 2.6 per day.
The 33 deaths so far in June amount to almost 2.8 deaths per day in the Valley.
Across the Valley on Friday, counties issued updates of their COVID-19 statistics:
Fresno County: 83 new confirmed infections, for a total of 2,478 to date. Of those, 52 people have died, 758 have recovered, and 1,668 remain as active cases. In hospitals across the county, 99 patients were being treated either for confirmed or suspected COVID-19 infections as of Thursday.
Kings County: 17 new cases Friday, 1,741 to date, including 987 connected to state prisons in the county. Six people have died, 649 recovered, 1,086 are active, and 31 people were hospitalized as of Thursday.
Madera County: 10 new cases Friday, 198 to date; no new deaths, three to date. There are 134 recovered, 61 active, and 11 hospitalized as of Thursday.
Mariposa County: No new cases, 16 to date including one death. Fifteen have recovered, and there are no active cases and no one hospitalized as of Thursday.
Merced County: 18 new cases Friday, 409 to date; no new deaths, seven to date. There have been 286 recovered, 116 active, and five people hospitalized as of Thursday.
Tulare County: 89 new infections Friday, 2,564 to date; no new deaths, 98 to date. There are 1,780 recovered, 686 active, and 41 people hospitalized as of Thursday.
‘Precarious time’
Vohra said Fresno County, its business community and its residents must find a balance between a desire to go out and do things after three months of stay-at-home orders and taking common-sense precautions to avoid spreading the virus.
Those measures, he said, include people staying home if they’re sick, washing and sanitizing their hands frequently and avoiding touching their face, and maintaining physical distancing of at least six feet outside their homes or wearing a mask when visiting local businesses for errands or pleasure.
“This really is a precarious time in the history of our society and definitely the history of our county, where we really need everyone to be mindful about how to keep themselves and their families safe,” Vohra said.
“On the one hand, we see our case counts going up, we see our number of fatalities going up, and on the other hand we are permitting sectors to reopen if they do so safely,” he added. “All of us have to work together to balance safety with the freedom and the activity that will be permitted whenever a lot of these sectors open up.”
Vohra likened his health officer order encouraging the use of face masks – a measure to which some residents and community leaders have strenuously objected – to other “harm reduction” safety mandates such as seat belts in automobiles and helmets for motorcycle riders that also engendered opposition in their early stages before they slowly gained wider acceptance. And he acknowledged the anxiety and frustration by some who have advocated for a faster pace of reopening the economy even as cases and fatalities increase.
But, Vohra said, he hopes people will realize that “we’re not through this pandemic yet.”
“You will get to do the things that you enjoy,” he said, “but you will need to be very mindful of the rest of the community so that we can continue to do the things that we enjoy without capsizing our health care system and without getting ourselves into trouble over the long term.”
Repeating history?
Just as happened with the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19 that was blamed for killing about 50 million people worldwide, concerns remain that a second wave of the virus may wash over California and the Valley as more businesses reopen if people don’t take the threat seriously.
“Those models are already being shared by the state. They’re expecting a second wave as early as July,” Vohra said. “So we are bracing ourselves for the impact of what that’s going to cause.”
“We hope that it’s a gentle wave just like the first one,” he added, “but we are also very aware that it could make us invoke surge protocols” that could roll back some of the allowances that have been made for businesses to reopen.
This story was originally published June 12, 2020 at 5:38 PM.
