Unvaccinated? Here’s what COVID ‘surge’ likely will mean for you, Fresno’s top doc warns
It’s a word that hasn’t been uttered publicly by Fresno County’s top medical official for months: “Surge.”
But Dr. Rais Vohra, interim health officer for the Fresno County Department of Public Health, said Thursday that an increasing number of infections and hospitalizations from the novel coronavirus – and a rise in the number of cases of the fast-spreading Delta variant – likely portend the early stages of a new surge of COVID-19 in California and the central San Joaquin Valley.
“We feel like we’re on the cusp of a surge statewide, and I think our region here in Fresno County will also be experiencing that same uptick in numbers,” Vohra told reporters in a weekly briefing on the pandemic.
The rolling average of new COVID-19 cases confirmed each day in Fresno County over a seven-day period has tripled, from an average of fewer than 24 new cases on July 9 to more than 76 on Thursday.
“For better or for worse, we are experiencing a higher number of cases that are going on right now across the state, and we’re also experiencing that here in Fresno County as well,” Vohra said. “Many, many of these cases are proving to be happening in the unvaccinated population.”
“As we’ve said before, this is really a pandemic that’s selecting two different risk pools,” Vohra said. “The people who are not yet vaccinated – let’s call them ‘pre-vaccinated’ because I’m an optimist – are basically at very high risk of catching COVID and then going on to be hospitalized.”
As of Friday, the most recent figures available from the county, 30 cases of the Delta variant – which first emerged in India last fall and has spread worldwide – have been identified in Fresno County.
That was more than triple the number of two weeks earlier, and likely a vast undercount of actual cases because of a two- to three-week lag between when samples are sent to the state Department of Public Health for testing and when the county is notified of a confirmed case.
“This Delta variant threatens to throw us some curve balls in the next few weeks,” Vohra said.
This story was originally published July 22, 2021 at 3:07 PM.
