Coronavirus update: Fresno hospitals prepare emergency plans as hundreds of cases pour in
Fresno County added 463 new COVID-19 cases Tuesday, bringing the county total to 64,274 since the pandemic began, according to the California Department of Public Health.
Delays in reporting are expected this week due to the holidays and many public agencies being closed, local health officials said. That could explain why the number of deaths has not been updated since last week, which currently totals 646 residents who have died since March.
In the past week, state officials reported an average of 5,706 new coronavirus cases a day, which means that about 583 people per 100,000 residents are reporting infections.
As of Monday, 677 Fresno County residents were in the hospital for COVID-19. Of those, 118 were in the ICU.
There were 13 ICU beds available as of Tuesday, according to county health officials. That’s an increase of five more beds from the previous day. Still, the county continues to report 0% bed availability. With the number of available beds being so low, state officials on Tuesday extended the regional COVID-19 stay-at-home order affecting Fresno, Merced, and the San Joaquin Valley.
The order will remain in place until ICU bed availability in the San Joaquin Valley is at or above 15%, they confirmed, which is the required threshold state officials have set to reopen local economies. It was unclear as of Tuesday when the region could meet the requirement.
The San Joaquin Valley region has a rate of 97.5 coronavirus cases per 100,000 people and a transmission rate of 1.13. Any rate higher than one is too high, officials said.
The San Joaquin Valley and Southern California regions remain the furthest from reopening, followed by the Bay Area and the Inland Empire. Northern California is the only region not under a stay-at-home order.
The six-county region of Fresno, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, and Tulare counties reported 1,359 total new cases on Tuesday, as well as three additional deaths, bringing the total to 1,513.
California exceeds 20,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations
California added 34,974 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday to a total of more than 2.2 million, state officials confirmed. An additional 442 deaths were also recorded, which means that a total of 24,987 California residents have died since the first case was reported last March.
About 570,000 of the state’s 2.2 million cases have been reported in the past two weeks alone, according to the California Department of Public Health. The number of hospitalized patients statewide exceeded 20,000 as of Tuesday, standing at 20,390, including at least 4,308 patients in the ICU.
With the death toll nearing 25,000, state officials report an average of more than 230 deaths a day based on data from the past two weeks, which is nearly 100 more than the peak average reported over the summer.
Despite the grim outlook, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday said the most recent numbers are trending slightly downward outside of Southern California. Health data also shows the test positivity rate is growing at a much slower pace than it was earlier in December, he confirmed. The 14-day positivity rate, on average, is now at 12.5%, increasing 0.7% in the past 10 days, after it had jumped 3.1% in the previous 10-day stretch.
As the state with the highest number of reported coronavirus infections, California hospitals are preparing for a potential crisis capacity, which state officials said could lead to a rationing of care. A hospital determines its status and would use ethical standards of fairness to decide who gets priority.
That’s already started to happen in the Southern California region, where hospitals are diverting ambulances and making decisions about whether to provide certain treatment for patients who are likely to die. On Tuesday, state officials said more than 95% of Los Angeles hospitals had diverted ambulances in the last 24 hours.
State officials confirmed that decisions could not be made based on a patient’s demographics, including age, race and sexual orientation, and immigration and incarceration status.
The U.S. reports more than 19.5 million COVID-19 cases
With an average of about 183,030 new COVID-19 cases per day, the U.S. as of Wednesday is one step closer to reaching 20 million nationwide cases. More than 19.5 million people have been sick with the coronavirus, with at least 200,902 additional cases reported Wednesday.
A total of 3,626 new deaths were also recorded, bringing the total to 338,767 people who have died across the country, according to a New York Times database. The number of hospitalized patients has reached 124,686, with 22,838 in the ICU, according to the Covid tracking project.
Joining the growing number of pharmaceutical companies that have successfully shown vaccine efficacy, a Chinese company on Wednesday confirmed its late-stage COVID-19 clinical trials said its vaccine was safe to use, The New York Times reports.
Following Pfizer and Moderna’s announcement of positive results last month, this is the latest development to demonstrate a vaccine can be safely distributed to the public.
The company Sinopharm, a government-controlled firm, said its vaccine made by the Beijing Institute of Biological Products arm had proved to be at least 79% effective while used during the late-stage trials. In similar trials, both Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccine last month confirmed its vaccines were at least 95% effective at protecting individuals from the virus.
The company, as of Wednesday, said it would apply with Chinese regulators to start distributing the vaccine to the public.