Fresno County sees largest single-day coronavirus case spike; four more Valley deaths

Fresno County reported its largest single-day increase in confirmed coronavirus infections on Friday, adding 321 new cases to its total since Thursday.

The figure eclipsed the previous mark of 240 cases on Monday and brings the total number of cases to 4,374 since the first local cases in the global pandemic were reported in early March. One more fatality was also reported Friday in Fresno County, bringing the number of deaths attributed to the virus to 72.

Across the central San Joaquin Valley, counties reported 460 new COVID-19 cases, as well as four additional deaths. Across Fresno, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced and Tulare counties, the total number of cases to date stands at 11,630, including 232 deaths.

June is proving to be the deadliest month of the pandemic so far in the Valley. COVID-19 has claimed 98 lives as of Friday, with five days remaining in the month. By comparison, there were 81 fatalities in May, 51 in April, and two in March.

Across the Valley, Friday’s updates by county health officials included:

Tulare County: 59 new cases on Friday, 3,705 confirmed cases to date; three new deaths, 122 to date.

Merced County: 33 new cases, 824 to date; no new deaths, 11 to date.

Madera County: 32 new cases, 415 to date; no new deaths, five to date.

Kings County: 14 new cases, 2,289 to date; no new deaths, 21 to date. (Friday night, the county said a system outage of the California Reportable Disease Information Exchange may have caused the daily report to come up short of true numbers.) More than 1,130 of Kings County’s confirmed cases are associated with state prisons in the county.

Mariposa County: one new case, 23 to date; no new deaths, one to date.

This story was originally published June 26, 2020 at 6:06 PM.