See how coronavirus rates among Fresno County’s leading causes of death
The novel coronavirus was blamed for the deaths of 711 Fresno County residents in 2020, from the first reported fatality from COVID-19 in April through the end of the year.
That’s more than the average number of lives lost in Fresno County to almost all leading causes of death for the nine-month period from 2016 through 2019, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the National Center for Health Statistics. Only heart disease and cancer claimed more lives on average between April and December in that four-year span.
While the first vaccines against COVID-19 became available on an emergency basis in mid-December, the pace of deaths from the coronavirus has only accelerated in Fresno County – 230 death certificates recorded in December and more than 410 through the first 3 1/2 weeks of January listed COVID-19 as the cause of death, the Fresno County Department of Public Health has reported.
Jut before Christmas, county officials said the rising number of deaths was forcing hospitals and the county morgue to bring in refrigerated trailer units to serve as temporary morgue space.
As of Wednesday, the county’s death toll from the coronavirus stands at more than 1,120.
“It can be numbing just to see this slow accrual of fatality numbers” from COVID-19, Fresno County interim health officer Dr. Rais Vohra said late last week. “Obviously it’s very heartbreaking that we now have passed this grim milestone of 1,000 deaths here in our county.”
Across the central San Joaquin Valley – Fresno, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced and Tulare counties – more than 2,300 lives have been lost to COVID-19 in the pandemic.
Deadliest in January
The number of coronavirus deaths in Fresno County has increased by more than half just since Jan. 1. In both December and January, Coronavirus ranks as the leading cause of deaths compared to averages for those months – higher even than heart disease and cancer.
By contrast, influenza and pneumonia – sometimes compared by some who have expressed doubt about the severity of COVID-19 – claimed an April-December average of about 91 lives in 2016 through 2019.
The April-December averages for the leading causes of death in Fresno County in 2016-2019, and COVID-19 in 2020, are:
- Heart diseases: 1,168
- Cancers: 998
- COVID-19 (2020): 711
- Accidents: 324
- Stroke: 305
- Alzheimer’s disease: 265
- Chronic lower respiratory disease: 223
- Diabetes: 186
- Hypertension and related renal disease: 141
- Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis: 120
- Influenza and pneumonia: 91
Other significant causes of death during the 2016-2019 span included suicide, 79 deaths; septicemia, 77 deaths; homicide, 57 deaths; and Parkinson’s disease, 57 deaths.
Prolonged hospitalizations add to trauma
Vohra has previously emphasized that each death from the coronavirus is a real person in the community, each with family and friends, and not merely a statistic in a table or chart. He lamented what families have gone through as their loved ones have languished in hospitals before passing. “It speaks to how many grieving families there are that have had to deal with so much,” he said.
“A lot of the people that pass, when we review their death certificates, they’ve had really prolonged hospitalizations,” Vohra added. “So it’s not just the fatality itself; it’s the trauma that many families are enduring day after day and week after week as they have someone in the hospital who is very sick and cannot receive visitors. It’s just such a hard thing to have a relative or loved one or a friend in the hospital right now.”
Almost three-quarters of the Fresno County residents who had died from COVID-10 as of Jan. 11 – the most recent details available from the county – were over the age of 65.
About two-thirds of the victims, regardless of age, had some other medical condition, or “co-morbidity,” that also contributed to their death, according to county health officials.
Among the 550 victims with known co-morbidities, almost 32% also suffered from diabetes, 31% from hypertension, 24% from cardiovascular disease aside from hypertension, almost 15% from kidney disease, 8% from lung disease, 5% from asthma and about 3% from liver disease. Those percentages add up to more than 100% because some victims had multiple other conditions in addition to COVID-19.
A milestone for reflection
In December, doctors involved in caring for coronavirus patients said that while the advent of two vaccines represented a ray of hope against COVID-19, they did not represent an instantaneous end to the pandemic that has gripped the Valley for more than 10 months.
Dr. Patrick Macmillan, a specialist in end-of-life care with the UCSF Fresno medical education program, last month described getting his first dose of vaccine as a “bittersweet” moment. “The emotion I felt this morning was sadness, in addition to being grateful and excited,” Macmillan said on Dec. 22. “The sadness is for those that have died and those that are dying, those that aren’t going to be able to get the vaccine, and for the families that I’ve talked to.”
When Macmillan made that statement, the county’s death toll was 646, compared to 1,122 on Wednesday.
Vohra reinforced that idea in his remarks to reporters last week. “The vaccines are obviously one layer of protection, but … the vaccines cannot be the only layer of protection,” he said. “Really, it’s up to all of us to make sure that we’re still maintaining all of the other safety precautions that we know will protect people.”
“Go ahead and wear that mask when you’re out in public; go ahead and use social distancing to your advantage; stay home,” he added. “There’s really good rationale for why all of those pre-vaccine policies were put into place. It’s because they were really good ideas, and they are continuing to be good ideas.”
Vohra said he hoped that the reality of surpassing 1,000 deaths in the county, which he described as “a grim milestone,” would prompt people to consider what they can do to turn the tide against the virus.
“I hope people, if anything, will reflect on this grim milestone … as an opportunity to really commit once more to these very important safety measures and to see this as a very temporary change to the way we live our lives,” he said. “As soon as we get enough of our population vaccinated and protected, we can move away from these measures.”
This story was originally published January 27, 2021 at 2:57 PM.
