Fresno County reports 14 new deaths from COVID-19. Fresno has 406 new cases, says state
Fresno County reported 14 new deaths related to the coronavirus on Friday, the first new numbers from county health officials since Tuesday.
The county’s totals stand at 171 deaths and 17,031 positive cases since the beginning of the pandemic. That’s 406 more cases than the day before, according to state numbers.
Of the Fresno County numbers, 6,505 patients have recovered.
Hospital numbers changing
Hospitals have seen some changes in the past week. Fresno County peaked at 313 confirmed-case hospitalizations July 30. The central San Joaquin Valley region peaked at 605 confirmed-case hospitalizations July 27.
Those numbers have started to trend downward to 292 hospitalizations in Fresno County on Thursday. The same can be said for the central San Joaquin Valley, which had 564 on Thursday.
The dip in hospitalizations can be misleading because people tend to show symptoms five days or so after being infected, according to Rais Vohra, the Fresno County interim health officer. It takes about two weeks for the hospitals to be affected by those new infections.
“Overall, whenever you see an uptick in numbers that’s going to be followed by an uptick in hospitalizations,” he said Friday in a media briefing over Zoom. “That’s something we’ve seen here.”
While the dip in local hospitalizations may temporarily result in more medical space, the state reached an ominous milestone.
California’s death toll from the coronavirus has officially surpassed 10,000, as the state has seen the rate of average daily reported COVID-19 fatalities rise steadily for more than a month.
The California Department of Public Health increased the tally to 10,011 with Friday morning’s reporting of 142 confirmed deaths.
Tracking still an issue
Counties all over the state are trying to track numbers for the virus while waiting for the state to fix its electronic tracking issues. That fix could come as early as next week, according to Vohra.
“The bug in the data pipeline is a state issue. It’s not at the county level,” he said. “That is leading to what is estimated to be an under-count on the cases.”
Other counties in the Valley
Tulare County reported 141 new cases on Friday, which pushes the total to 10,475. The total of 196 deaths didn’t change.
Merced County reached 5,012 cases on Friday after reporting 157 new cases. Two new deaths brought that total to 64.
Madera County tallied 35 more cases and three new deaths. The county now stands at 2,302 cases and 39 deaths since the pandemic began.
Mariposa County added on Friday one new case but no deaths, which totals 60 and two, respectively.
Kings County has not reported since for Sunday.
The Sacramento Bee contributed to this report.
This story was originally published August 7, 2020 at 4:26 PM.
