Coronavirus update: Fresno County on brink of 70,000 cases ahead of death toll update
Fresno County was rapidly nearing 70,000 confirmed coronavirus cases as of late Monday when 598 new cases were added after a long holiday weekend. A total of 711 people have died as of last week, local officials confirmed. The number of deaths is expected to be updated this week. Deaths are typically reported on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Though vaccines are making their way around the state, the number of hospitalized patients in Fresno County and the greater central San Joaquin Valley region remains in a critical state as the area continues to report 0% ICU bed availability.
As of Monday, there are 663 people hospitalized due to the virus in Fresno County, and 132 remained in the ICU. Just six staffed and open ICU beds were available, health officials confirmed.
Across the six-county region that makes up the central San Joaquin Valley, there were 3,379 new cases reported as of Monday. That brings the total to 152,372 people who have contracted the disease since the virus first arrived last spring.
California vaccinates nearly half a million residents
California surpassed more than 2.4 million COVID-19 cases Monday while adding nearly 100 new deaths to its total of 26,635 statewide.
State officials confirmed six people across the state had also been infected with the new, more contagious variant of the disease that was first identified in Great Britain just a few weeks ago. The first case of the new variant was discovered in a San Diego County resident only one week ago.
According to the California Department of Public Health, California has added more than 500,000 new cases and nearly 4,000 new deaths in the past two weeks alone, which averages to about 38,000 infections and 283 fatalities a day. The number of deaths is twice as high as the peak seen during the summer, reaching a record high this past week when an average of 336 Californians died a day.
There were 22,003 Californians hospitalized with the disease on Monday, where 4,671 remained in the ICU.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, on Monday during a news conference, announced that a little more than 454,000 Californians had been given their first shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, which was approved for mass distribution to healthcare workers and residents of long term care facilities last month.
The governor said approximately 1.3 million doses of the vaccine had arrived in the state, a discrepancy of a half-million from the federal government’s figure. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says as of Monday that California received 1.8 million doses. The governor confirmed at least 600,00 additional doses had not yet arrived in the state.
Though public health data shows many Californians stayed home for the New Year holiday, Newsom said he still expects a surge in the coming weeks. Compared to pre-pandemic months last year, Newsom said travel was down by 23%. That’s the most mobility that has been down since late March, he added, when the first stay-at-home order was enacted.
National COVID-19 numbers show 20.8 million infections
The U.S. reported nearly 21 million infections Tuesday, adding 198,181 new cases and at least 2,048 new deaths from the day before. There has been an average of 214,270 cases per day in the past week, unchanged from the average from two weeks ago. As of Tuesday morning, at least 20,864,900 people have been infected, and a total of 353,760 have died, according to a New York Times database.
On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration rejected an idea pushed by a top vaccine official from President Donald Trump’s administration that the U.S. should start stretching the available number of vaccine doses to reach even more Americans.
The agency called the proposed idea for half-doses of the Moderna vaccine “premature” and “not rooted solidly in the available science,” The New York Times reports.
So far, just two companies have been approved for emergency use to distribute vaccines — Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech. Together, the available number of vaccines can help immunize about 185 million people by the end of June 2021.
This story was originally published January 5, 2021 at 8:26 AM.