Coronavirus update: ICU capacity at 0% and Fresno’s top doctors say things will get worse
Fresno County added 229 new coronavirus cases and eight new deaths on Tuesday, bringing the total to 41,098 total cases and 514 deaths, according to state data.
The county is now averaging about 341 new cases a day, increasing by nearly 14% from the tally two weeks ago. During that same time, the county had also reported an average of about 3.7 deaths per day.
The California Department of Public Health on Tuesday reported Fresno County had an average of about 24 new daily cases per 100,000 residents during the week of Nov. 28. During that same seven-day stretch, more than 11% of people who were tested for coronavirus had received positive results.
With Fresno County continuing to set new records for coronavirus cases each day, the number of intensive care beds across hospitals countywide has effectively reduced to zero.
On Monday, hospitals in Fresno County had about nine ICU beds available, and the county’s latest assessment set the remaining capacity at 0%.
The situation at the county’s hospitals is expected to get worse, local county health officials said Tuesday. Following the Thanksgiving holiday, some public health experts believe the gatherings among families and friends have yet to be felt.
As of Monday, a total of 455 patients remain hospitalized for confirmed or suspected coronavirus infections across the county, including 85 people who are in the ICU.
A total of 25,439 people in Fresno County have recovered from the disease.
California’s central San Joaquin Valley nears 100,000 cases
Across the six-county region that makes up the central San Joaquin Valley, the coronavirus took the lives of 32 additional people, marking the third-biggest day of the pandemic for fatalities. There have been a total of 1,237 people who have died from COVID-19 related complications.
The number of active cases across the Valley stands at 1,638 as of Tuesday, bringing the total to 98,515 cases since the pandemic began.
Latest California COVID-19 update
As of Tuesday, state officials reported California had reached a total of 1,421,089 coronavirus cases, up by 35,400 from the day before. The state added 219 new deaths, bringing the total to 20,273.
In the past week, California has averaged about 24,882 new daily cases, increasing by 86.4% from the numbers reported in late November. Of the people who were tested statewide in the past week, about 10.1% have come back positive.
The state has reached a new high, reporting a total of 10,567 hospitalizations.
In total, the state has about 7,881 ICU beds, with about 62% currently being occupied by COVID-19 patients, according to the data tracker from Covid Act Now.
U.S. exceeds 15.2 million coronavirus cases; 285,000 deaths
As one of the countries with the largest number of coronavirus cases, the U.S. on Tuesday continued to set daily new records, reaching a total of 15,248,800 coronavirus infections and 286,400 deaths, according to a New York times database.
About 220,225 new cases and 2,597 COVID-19 related deaths were reported on Tuesday, averaging to about 207,064 cases a day in the past week. The U.S. broke a new record for the number of deaths this past week, averaging 2,249 deaths a day.
About 104,600 patients remain hospitalized across the country.