New COVID cases continue to drop in Fresno, as switch to relaxed indoor mask mandate looms
The number of new coronavirus cases arising in Fresno and neighboring counties in the central San Joaquin Valley continue to plummet after setting pandemic-high records just a few weeks ago.
Through Friday, the Fresno County Department of Public Health reported 6,370 new laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infections this week. That’s a drop of more than 41% from last week’s case count of 10,848, and almost 65% less than the week ending Jan. 22, when 17,931 cases were reported – the single highest week in 23 months of the pandemic in the Valley.
“The numbers are changing quickly in a very good way,” Dr. Rais Vohra, Fresno County’s interim health officer, said in a media briefing on Thursday. “There is happy news about the case rates, but we’re not out of the woods yet.”
That’s because the number of cases this week in Fresno County is week’s cases remain higher than any of the weeks between the deadly surge that struck in December 2020 / January 2021 and the early stages of the latest upswing.
The spike in cases that began in late December in Fresno County and the Valley was attributed to the rapid spread of the highly contagious omicron variant of coronavirus – a strain that was unknown before November, when it was first identified among patients in countries on the southern African continent.
Within weeks, omicron became the dominant variant in the U.S., blamed by the Centers for Disease Control for almost 99% of all new COVID-19 infections by mid-January.
The sudden surge gave rise in mid-December to statewide orders in California calling for all residents to wear face coverings in indoor public spaces, regardless of their individual vaccination status, to slow the spread of the omicron variant.
Those restrictions are being eased starting next Wednesday, when only people who are not fully vaccinated will be expected to wear masks when they’re in stores, restaurants or other indoor public venues.
A similar plunge in cases is evident across the Valley. Through Friday, 13,635 cases were reported by health officials in Fresno, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced and Tulare counties – a 33% drop from last week’s case counts, and about 65% less than the record-setting week ending Jan. 22.
Since the first local cases of COVID-19 were identified in the Valley in early March 2020, almost 220,000 confirmed infections have been reported among Fresno County’s 1 million residents. Almost 70,000 of those have arisen since the start of this year less than two months ago.
To date, more than 2,500 Fresno County residents have lost their lives to the coronavirus and the respiratory disease it causes.
Valleywide, the number of cases stands at almost 473,000 over the past 23 months, including at least 5,327 deaths blamed on COVID-19 in the six-county region.
This story was originally published February 11, 2022 at 5:38 PM.
