COVID cases, deaths adding up in Fresno, Valley. Here’s what the trend looks like now
The COVID-19 pandemic is not yet 10 months old in the central San Joaquin Valley, but December has been particularly trying with almost one-third of the region’s total infections recorded in this month alone.
On Wednesday, the number of people who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus since early March topped 132,000, driven by almost 1,100 new cases reported in Fresno County by state health officials and more than 2,400 across Fresno, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced and Tulare counties.
Of that Valley total, almost 43,000 are the result of positive tests confirmed since Dec. 1. The Valley has experienced an average of 2,828 new cases each day just in the past week.
In Fresno County, the cumulative total for confirmed infections crept closer to 60,000 since the first local cases surfaced on March 6. Of those, in excess of 21,000 – or more than 35% – have cropped up just this month.
Even though catching up on a backlog of test results created some massive daily numbers last week – which likely meant cases were being underreported for days prior – the rapid increase in the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 in Fresno County and surrounding Valley counties means that hospitals are scrambling to deal with a corresponding rise in people requiring hospitalization for treatment of the virus and the respiratory disease it causes.
On Tuesday – the most recent data available from the California Department of Public Health – hospitals across the Valley had more than 1,000 inpatients with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19, including 170 who were sick enough to be in intensive-care units.
Of Fresno County’s 590 hospital patients with confirmed or suspected coronavirus infections, 109 were in ICUs.
Hospitals in Fresno County have 149 licensed ICU beds for adults, but county health officials said facilities have managed to shuffle space inside their walls to create additional surge capacity for ICU patients. Still, as of Tuesday, only seven ICU beds were reported to be available for new patients, whether they have COVID-19 or some other serious condition.
Dan Lynch, the county’s emergency medical services coordinator, and Dr. Anneli von Reinhart, an emergency room physician at Community Regional Medical Center in downtown Fresno, said this week that the reported number of beds does not reflect the reality that hospitals in Fresno County have effectively maxed out their ICU capacity and have resorted to holding would-be ICU patients in their emergency departments until intensive-care beds open up for them.
“We are already on the brink,” von Reinhart said Tuesday. “We are seeing the consequences of the choices that everyone made around Thanksgiving, and the kind of exponential growth of cases and our inability to expand any further, means we can’t handle any more than that.”
December has now become the deadliest month of the pandemic in both Fresno County and across the central San Joaquin Valley, with 165 fatalities reported in Fresno County and 329 throughout the six-county region. One out of four coronavirus-related deaths in Fresno County, and one out of five in the Valley, have been reported since Dec. 1.
The increase in the number of people dying from the disease has prompted hospitals in Fresno, as well as the county coroner’s office, to install refrigerated trailer units to serve as extra morgue space, Lynch said Tuesday.
Dr. Patrick Macmillan, an end-of-life and hospice care specialist with the UCSF Fresno medical education program, said the number of deaths is unprecedented in his experience. “Essentially, what my days have consisted of … these past few weeks is seeing an amount of death that I’ve never seen in my career,” he said this week. “Right now we’re seeing such a volume of death, it can be emotionally draining and devastating” for doctors, nurses and other health-care providers.
Around the Valley
Wednesday’s coronavirus case updates from counties in the central San Joaquin Valley include:
Fresno County: 1,072 new cases, 59,640 to date; no additional deaths, 646 to date. Fresno County typically updates fatalities on Tuesdays and Fridays, but no update is expected on Friday this week because of the Christmas holiday.
Kings County: 68 new cases, 14,951 to date; three additional deaths, 108 to date. The count includes 6,494 infections and 15 deaths to date among inmates at state prisons in Avenal and Corcoran.
Madera County: 155 new cases, 9,305 to date; five additional deaths, 116 to date.
Mariposa County: Three new cases, 208 to date; no additional deaths, four to date.
Merced County: 674 new cases, 17,785 to date; seven additional deaths, 232 to date.
Tulare County: 371 new cases, 30,422 to date; 13 additional deaths, 373 to date.
Valleywide, 2,343 new cases and 28 additional deaths were reported on Wednesday. A total of 132,311 residents have tested positive for the virus, whether or not they experienced symptoms. Of those, 1,479 have died from the disease.
This story was originally published December 23, 2020 at 6:15 PM.
