Coronavirus death toll pushes past 3,000 people in Fresno, Valley region
Substantial increases in the number of coronavirus vaccine doses being allocated to Fresno County and nearby Valley counties over recent weeks is welcome news to health officials and residents who are eager to get their shots.
But the growing availability of the vaccines since the first doses were administered in mid-December is coming too late to save the lives of hundreds of people who have died of COVID-19 in February – the second deadliest month so far in the yearlong pandemic.
About one out of every five deaths blamed on the novel coronavirus over the past year in Fresno County and nearby counties in the central San Joaquin Valley has been reported in just the past four weeks.
Twenty-one additional fatalities officially attributed to COVID-19 were reported Friday by Dr. Rais Vohra, Fresno County’s interim health officer. Since Sunday, the county has acknowledged 76 deaths, pushing the total deaths so far in February to 306.
That represents 21.2% of the 1,443 lives that have been lost since the first local cases were confirmed in early March of 2020 in Fresno County.
A similar pattern exists throughout the central San Joaquin Valley, where the overall death toll from COVID-19 pushed beyond 3,000 on Friday. Collectively, the counties of Fresno, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced and Tulare reported 35 deaths on Friday, 135 so far this week, and 603 this month.
January remains the month in which the most deaths were reported, both in Fresno County and Valleywide: 426 lives lost in Fresno County, 821 in the six-county region.
While the number of fatalities continues to rise, the pace at which new coronavirus cases are surfacing continues to slow after a vicious winter surge. Each day this week, the number of confirmed infections revealed daily by testing has been in the hundreds across the Valley, compared to soaring into into the thousands on some days in December and January.
More vaccine doses
Joe Prado, community health division manager for the Fresno Count Department of Public Health, said the county will receive an allocation of 32,000 doses of coronavirus vaccine for next week, which will push the total number of doses allotted to the county by the state Department of Public Health to 208,000.
The increase in doses shipped to the county health department is in addition to doses being given by medical providers that serve patients in multiple counties, such as Kaiser Permanente or Adventist Health, or doses under the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program that are being sent directly by the federal government to companies like CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens to offer shots at their retail stores, including some sites in Fresno and the Valley.
But supplies of vaccine remain limited, and demand remains high, so eligibility to receive shots is being staged in tiers. So far, shots have been reserved for people who work in health care and emergency services and for people ages 65 and older, with some vaccination clinic events in the area for workers in the food and agriculture industries.
Starting Monday, eligibility in Fresno County will expand dramatically to include all workers in agriculture and food – not just farm labor and food processing plants, but also restaurant and grocery workers who are involved in the food supply chain, Prado said earlier this week.
Also eligible to sign up for vaccination appointments will be workers in the education and child-care sectors, including special clinics being set up with health care providers by area school districts for their teachers and staff.
Other education workers, including child-care, preschool and college faculty and staff, will be able to sign up for vaccinations through sites and programs that are open to the public. Those include local health care providers; mass vaccination programs such as the county’s site at the Fresno Fairgrounds in southeast Fresno, Sierra Pacific Orthopedic Center in northeast Fresno or United Health Centers’ drive-through site at Central High School in northwest Fresno; or the participating retail pharmacies.
Friday’s case updates
In addition to the 21 deaths reported Friday in Fresno County, the county health department reported 221 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed through testing. That pushed the cumulative number of county residents who have tested positive for the virus to more than 95,000 since the first local case was confirmed almost a year ago.
The county’s total now stands at 95,015, of whom 1,443 have died.
Elsewhere in the Valley, county case updates include:
Kings County: The case count pushed to beyond 22,000 cases on Friday, with the addition of 52 new cases raising the total infections to 22,003 to date. No additional deaths were reported, so the death toll to date remains at 218. More than 7,200 of Kings County’s cases, and 17 deaths, have been among inmates at state prisons in Avenal and Corcoran.
Madera County: 17 new cases Friday, 15,356 to date; no additional deaths, 209 to date.
Mariposa County: One new case, 395 to date; no additional deaths, seven to date.
Merced County: 56 new cases, 28,971 to date; two additional deaths, 397 to date.
Tulare County: 85 new cases, 47,869 to date; 12 additional deaths, 758 to date.
Almost 210,000 Valley residents have, at some point over the past year, tested positive for COVID-19, whether they experienced symptoms of the viral respiratory disease or not. Of those, 3,032 residents succumbed to the illness.
This story was originally published February 26, 2021 at 5:28 PM.
