Holiday weekend brings 50 COVID deaths to Fresno County. Here’s the region’s latest data
Fresno County and the central San Joaquin Valley added more than 2,000 new coronavirus cases and dozens of additional deaths over the long Presidents Day weekend.
Most Valley counties did not provide updates during the holiday weekend, so the abundance of cases represents a buildup of confirmed infections since previous updates on Friday afternoon and evening.
More than half of the weekend cases were in Fresno County, according to data from the state Department of Public Health: 352 cases on Saturday, 287 on Sunday, 258 on Monday and 166 on Tuesday. The Fresno County Department of Public Health reported 50 additional deaths on Tuesday, it’s first update on fatalities since Thursday.
Since the first confirmed coronavirus case was identified in Fresno County in early March 2020, 93,231 residents have tested positive for the virus, whether or not they had symptoms such as cough, fever, loss of smell or taste or others. The number of fatalities blamed on COVID-19 stands at 1,341.
Also on Tuesday, Madera County’s case total pushed past 15,000 over the past 11 1/2 months, while Merced County has now surpassed 28,000 confirmed cases.
Tier Tuesday updates
Also on Tuesday, the state kept Fresno, Kings, Madera, Merced and Tulare counties assigned in purple Tier 1 of California’s color-coded Blueprint for a Safer Economy, a sliding scale of criteria for reopening businesses and social activities from measures aimed at limiting spread of the coronavirus in a county.
Tier 1 is the most restrictive of the four tiers, and represents “widespread” risk of community transmission based on a rate of more than seven new cases each day for every 100,000 residents in a county and more than 8% of people tested whose results come back positive for the infection.
In Fresno County, the state reported a daily new-case rate of 22.8 per 100,000 residents for the week ending Feb. 6, and a test-positivity rate of 7.9. To move from the purple tier to red, a county needs to meet or beat the thresholds for both new daily cases and testing positivity and remain below those thresholds for two consecutive weeks before the lower restrictions take effect.
In the purple tier, restaurants, gyms and other kinds of businesses are officially restricted to outdoor services only, although some businesses in Fresno, Clovis and elsewhere in the Valley have opened for indoor operations in defiance of the state-ordered limitations.
Mariposa County remains in red Tier 2, denoting “substantial” risk of viral transmission. In the red tier, restaurants and other businesses can offer indoor dining or indoor operations with limits on how many people are allowed inside.
Statewide, 52 of California’s 58 counties are in purple Tier 1.
Around the Valley
Tuesday coronavirus updates from counties in the central San Joaquin Valley included:
Fresno County: 166 new cases Tuesday, 1,053 since Friday, and 93,231 to date; 50 additional deaths, 1,341 to date.
Kings County: 11 new cases Tuesday, 125 since Friday, 21,658 to date; one additional death Tuesday, four since Friday, 209 to date.
Madera County: 98 new cases since Friday, 15,064 to date; 12 additional deaths since Feb. 9, 201 to date.
Mariposa County: No new cases Tuesday, two since Friday, 388 to date; two additional deaths reported Monday, seven to date.
Merced County: 500 new cases since Thursday, 28,201 to date; seven additional deaths, 382 to date.
Tulare County: 220 new cases since Friday, 46,934 to date; six additional deaths, 697 to date.
Valleywide, the cumulative number of people who have tested positive for COVID-19 over the past year has exceeded 205,000, while the death toll from the virus has pushed past 2,800.
