Coronavirus update: Fresno County reports more than 1,700 cases over Christmas weekend
Over the course of the Christmas holiday weekend, Fresno County added 1,763 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the county total to 62,251 positive cases as of Sunday.
Fresno County is in one of the regions that continues to rake in one of California’s highest number of daily new infections. The county is now ranking in seventh place among the state’s 58 counties for the most cases.
No new deaths were reported over the weekend. Due to the holiday, the county has not provided an update on the number of deaths since last week, when health officials reported an additional 89 people had died from the disease. There are a total of 646 people who have died as of last week. The county is expected to provide an update on the number of deaths Tuesday.
The county is still below the 15% ICU availability requirement needed to reopen the economy, reporting 0% bed availability as of last week. Just seven ICU beds were available across the county on Christmas., down from the 18 beds that were available at the start of the week. There are 620 residents who are hospitalized, where 139 remain in the ICU.
Across the six-county region that makes up the central San Joaquin Valley, there have been a total of 136,733 COVID-19 cases and 1,481 deaths as of Friday.
California leads country with number of COVID-19 infections
California continues to outpace the rest of the country with the number of coronavirus cases with outbreaks in Fresno, Los Angeles and San Diego continuing to break record highs.
The state added more than 300,000 cases during the week of Dec. 22 alone.
In the past week, the Southern California region has reported the highest daily average of new coronavirus cases, with about 966.4 new coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents. The San Joaquin Valley region, which is comprised of 12 counties, ranks in second with 934.8 cases per 100,000 residents, while the Sacramento region is bringing in about 484.5 cases per 100,000, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis..
As of Monday, there were 2,129,149 confirmed cases statewide, with 28,319 added on Sunday. 64 more people died from the virus on Sunday, bringing the state’s total to 24,288 deaths.
The state is now averaging about 37,537 cases per day based on data from the past week and about 230 deaths. The number of daily new deaths has increased by about 45.6% over the past two weeks.
With many public agencies closed for the Christmas holiday, the number of new infections will likely not be reported until local health departments resume normal operations.
About 19,237 people remain in the state’s hospitals , increasing by about 47% from two weeks ago. Of those, 4,123 are in the ICU.
National COVID-19 case count nears 20 million
The U.S. is inching its way toward 20 million cases, representing about 19.1 million of the global case count. As of Monday, the country added 152,102 new cases, averaging about 184,951 daily cases over the past seven days, according to a New York Times analysis. A total of 333,200 Americans have died since the onset of the pandemic, with 1,230 cases added as of Monday.
The number of nationwide hospitalizations has increased to 118,720 as of Monday, where about 22,447 people remain in the ICU, according to the COVID data tracking project.
Trump signs $900 billion stimulus package
President Donald Trump late Sunday signed a bipartisan federal stimulus bill, which lawmakers agreed would issue checks of up to $600 and distribute a federal unemployment benefit of $300 to struggling residents for at least 11 weeks. The bill also includes food and rental assistance and funding for virus distribution efforts, hospitals and education.
Trump’s signing of the bill on Sunday prevented a government shutdown, which nearly occurred after the president last week threatened to not sign the bill when he said the amount of the checks should more than triple from $600 to $2,000.
Americans who qualify include those who make under $75,000 a year and heads of households making up to $112,500 and a couple or someone whose spouse died this year earning up to $150,000 a year, The New York Times reports. Americans who make slightly more than these totals are expected to receive partial payments.
This story was originally published December 28, 2020 at 8:46 AM.