Coronavirus update: Fresno County cases reach 71,000 cases as hospitalizations rise
There were 433 new Fresno County residents infected with COVID-19 cases on Thursday, pushing the county to a total of 71,404 cases since the pandemic began.
The total number of deaths remained at 711 on Thursday. The county does not report deaths daily and hadn’t reported any new deaths since one week ago when 65 new deaths were recorded on New Year’s Day.
There were 655 hospitalized coronavirus patients in Fresno County hospitals on Thursday. Of those, 114 remained in the ICU, decreasing by six from the day before.
Fresno County and the greater San Joaquin Valley region continues to see 0% ICU bed availability. It currently has just eight staffed ICU beds available as of Thursday.
California updates coronavirus travel policy
COVID-19 related hospitalizations and deaths have been hitting staggering highs in California, despite being too early for either Christmas or New Year’s Eve gatherings to be a significant factor in either figure.
California officials on Thursday reported an additional 583 new deaths, two shy of the record-high 585 reported on Jan.1. The state in Thursday’s update included a total of 28,565 confirmed deaths and nearly 2.6 million positive cases of COVID-19 after adding 39,641 on Thursday, according to the California Department of Public Health.
Statewide, more than 22,000 patients with COVID-19 were in the hospital, including over 4,700 in intensive care units. There were a total of 22,851 hospitalizations, of which 4,811 are in the ICU.
In the past two weeks, 4,410 Californians have died of the disease for an average of 315 per day, state data shows.
A total of 586,379 Californians have been vaccinated statewide, an increase of 56,003 from the day before.
This week, the California Department of Public Health updated its guidelines on COVID-19 risk associated with traveling, expanding on an advisory sent on Nov. 13 with two significant updates.
The move follows the most recent surge in new cases, driven by family gatherings during the holidays. The advisory was also tightened at least partly due to the new variant of the virus recently confirmed in California.
The new guidelines shorten the self-quarantine period from 14 to 10 days for non-essential out-of-state travelers, consistent with more recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations. Non-essential travelers are still “strongly discouraging” from entering California.
The new guidelines also instruct Californians to limit non-essential travel to a maximum of 120 miles from home within the state in addition to avoiding other states or countries.
National COVID-19 updates
For weeks, national health leaders have warned the number of daily new deaths would continue to climb in the weeks following the holidays.
Now, for the second day in a row, the U.S. on Thursday set a daily new record for coronavirus-related deaths, tallying 4,112 in a single day and bringing the total to 365,595 since the pandemic began. Public health experts also reported a new daily case record of 280,292 cases, breaching more than 21.6 million infections nationwide.
As of Friday morning, there were 132,370 nationwide hospitalizations. Of those, 23,821 Americans remained in the ICU.