COVID patients in Fresno, Valley hospitals nearly matches a year ago, as surge continues
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Hospitals in Fresno and surrounding counties in the central San Joaquin Valley continue to face some of the highest demand for inpatient care for coronavirus cases in more than a year.
On Monday, hospitals across Fresno County collectively had 601 patients in their beds with confirmed COVID-19 infections, including 98 who were sick enough to require treatment in intensive-care units. Those numbers were down only slightly from late last week.
But the volume of coronavirus patients over the past week has been higher than any point since January 2021, when the region was starting to emerge from a surge in which hospitals in Fresno County peaked at 660 patients.
Across the six counties of the central San Joaquin Valley – Fresno, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced and Tulare counties – almost 1,000 people with confirmed or suspected coronavirus infections were receiving inpatient care, including 144 in ICU beds.
County by county, reports from the state Department of Public Health on hospitalized patients on Monday include:
- Fresno County: 601 confirmed COVID-19 cases in hospitals Monday, plus nine suspected cases for which confirming laboratory tests were pending; 98 patients in intensive-care units.
- Kings County: 59 confirmed COVID-19 patients, no suspected cases; four patients in ICUs.
- Madera County: 57 confirmed COVID-19 patients, three suspected cases; seven patients in ICUs.
- Mariposa County: 17 confirmed COVID-19 patients.
- Merced County: 68 confirmed COVID-19 patients, no suspected cases; 14 patients in ICUs.
- Tulare County: 171 confirmed COVID-19 patients, seven suspected cases; 21 patients in ICUs.
Health officials attribute many of the new COVID-19 cases reported in the Valley to the highly contagious omicron variant that emerged in November in countries in southern Africa and has quickly spread around the world.
The California Department of Public Health reports that more than 97% of positive tests sent for genomic sequencing have come back as the omicron variant as of last week. That’s a flip from the beginning of December, when almost all of the positive tests sequenced were the delta variant blamed for an increase in cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the late summer and fall, while omicron was less than 1%.
Nationwide, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 99.9% of all new COVID-19 cases are attributable to the omicron variant, compared to less than 8% less than two months ago.
