COVID-19 hospitalizations dip from peak, but cases, deaths worry Fresno’s health officer
The number of people hospitalized in Fresno County and neighboring counties for confirmed coronavirus infections has declined in recent days.
But as the average daily number of new cases continues to climb, Fresno County’s top doctor said Tuesday he fears that will drive future hospitalizations and fatalities in the coming days and weeks.
In a Tuesday afternoon update, 127 new confirmed infections and eight additional deaths were reported by the Fresno County Department of Public Health. Th county has had 13,336 residents test positive since the first case of COVID-19 was reported in early March.
The deaths reported Tuesday push to 120 the number of lives lost to the contagion in Fresno County. In July, 47 people have died due to complications from the coronavirus.
Over the past two weeks, Fresno County has experienced an average of about 352 new cases of COVID-19 each day. That’s the highest daily average the county has suffered to date, and it’s up from a 14-day daily average of 263 cases as of July 14.
On Friday, Fresno hospitals were treating 311 confirmed coronavirus patients, according to data from the California Department of Health Services. As of Monday, that was down to 297 patients, including 51 in intensive-care units.
Vohra’s concern
Those divergent directions – a rise in daily new cases, and a slight decline in hospitalizations – remain a concern for Dr. Rais Vohra, Fresno County’s interim health officer.
“Certainly our hospitals need all the help they can get, so any sense of a breather is much welcome,” Vohra said Tuesday. But after working a shift in the emergency department at Community Regional Medical Center in downtown Fresno on Monday, he added, “it’s just as busy as ever. Even though the COVID cases may be coming down, everything else is still coming in.”
Between coronavirus patients and an abundance of other patients requiring hospital attention for injuries and ailments such as trauma, heart attacks and others, hospitals across Fresno County remain at or over their standard capacities.
“While we certainly welcome the brief respite in the numbers, I think it would be very premature to say we are out of this crisis phase,” Vohra said. “We need to be doing a lot more to help temper this spread throughout the community, because we expect that’s what’s really going to drive hospital admissions and all of the other shortages that the hospitals are reporting.”
COVID-19 infection timeline
It takes time – perhaps a week, Vohra said – for a COVID-19 infection to make someone sick enough to realize they need to go to a hospital. That lag time between infection and symptoms, and between symptoms and hospitalization, are what have him worried about hospital capacity moving forward.
“The first few days can actually be deceptively benign for an infection that really goes on to land someone in the ICU or worse,” he said. “People sometimes wait too long. They feel pretty good for the first couple of days.”
“Then they get sicker and sicker and don’t realize their body is actually breaking down. So they wait too long to come in (to the hospital) and say, ‘Hey, something’s not right,’” Vohra said. “That is a very tragic but very common story that our ICU doctors are telling us.”
Fresno County reported that it continues to monitor 9,336 active cases of the virus, and count 3,880 patients as recovered, either through negative test results or being free from symptoms after quarantine or isolation following infection.
Around the region
Elsewhere in the Valley, Tuesday updates included:
Madera County: 118 new confirmed cases, 1,841 to date; two additional deaths, 23 to date; 893 active cases, 925 recovered.
Mariposa County: three new cases, 51 to date; no new deaths, two to date; 12 active cases,37 recovered.
Merced County: 253 new cases, 3,763 to date; no new deaths, 29 to date; 1,580 active cases, 2,154 recovered.
Tulare County: 328 new cases, 8,862 to date; one new death, 173 to date; 3,434 active cases, 4,608 recovered. Tulare County’s Wednesday morning report included 214 new cases, no new deaths.
Kings County: 70 new cases, 4,036 to date; one new death, 50 to date; 1,537 active cases, 2,449 recovered. More than 1,400 of the cases to date have been associated with state prisons located in Kings County.
Across the region, counties have seen an average of about 700 new COVID-19 infections each day confirmed by testing over the past two weeks.
The six counties collectively have seen 397 deaths attributed to the coronavirus since the onset of the pandemic, including 151 in July. Over the past two weeks, an average of more than six new deaths have been reported each day across the central San Joaquin Valley – the highest daily average to date.
Hospital workforce sick
In addition to brimming with patients – whether those patients have COVID-19 or not – hospitals are also coping with the virus affecting their own staffs.
Community Medical Centers, which operates Community Regional Medical Center, Clovis Community Medical Center and the Fresno Heart and Surgical Hospital, reported that it has almost 220 of its healthcare workers off work and isolating themselves because of exposure to the virus, including 104 who are confirmed through testing as having the infection.
Another major Fresno hospital, Saint Agnes Medical Center, had 88 of its staff in quarantine or isolation, including 38 confirmed infections.
Kaweah Delta Medical Center in Visalia had 94 people on leave of absence due to coronavirus as of Tuesday, a hospital spokeswoman said.
This story was originally published July 28, 2020 at 5:40 PM.
