Fresno County nears 11,000 cases of COVID-19, reports 4 more deaths. State behind on tracing
Four more people have died from the coronavirus in Fresno County, where the number of cases also grew by 331, according to the numbers reported Tuesday by health officials.
The tally in Fresno County has reached 10,970 cases and 104 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic in March. The number of people who have recovered is 2,706.
Between confirmed cases and suspected patients — those who show symptoms of the coronavirus disease but were not yet confirmed through testing — the total COVID-19 caseload at hospitals on Sunday was 307 — an 88.3% increase over the past two weeks.
The central San Joaquin Valley has now passed 100 COVID-19-related deaths for the month of July.
State can’t keep up
California has too many COVID-19 cases to realistically investigate and trace each new infection, Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said Tuesday.
“At the level of transmission we’re seeing across the state, even a very very robust contact tracing team in every single county will have a hard time reaching out to every case,” Ghaly said. “No one has anticipated building a program to contact trace the level of cases we’re seeing here.”
The state has trained about 3,600 state workers to help counties with their contact tracing programs, which aim to reach every infected person and their contacts and convince them to quarantine. But the California Department of Public Health said nearly two thirds of those state workers had not yet been assigned to do that work as of last week.
Around the Valley
Tulare County has 7,120 cases of COVID-19 and 168 deaths, which is 213 more cases and two more deaths than on Monday.
Merced County reported 119 cases but no new deaths on Tuesday. That brings the totals to 2,813 and 22, respectively.
Madera County saw a reduction of its total by 12 cases to 14,39. Despite adding 25 new cases on Tuesday, 37 cases originally counted in Madera were reassigned to other counties, according to health officials. There was no change to the 13 deaths.
Mariposa County reported three new cases late Tuesday to bring its total to 41. One person has died since the beginning of the pandemic.
Kings County reported 67 new cases, which brings the total to 3,465. No new deaths leaves the total at 42.
Nearly 3.9 million Americans have tested positive and more than 140,000 have died from the disease, according to The COVID Tracking Project and Johns Hopkins University CSSE. There have been more than 400,000 confirmed cases in California and 7,700 people have died.
This story was originally published July 21, 2020 at 4:12 PM.
