COVID vaccine doses top 320,000 in Fresno County. What does it mean for slowing the virus?
One out of every four Fresno County residents who are eligible to get a COVID-19 vaccination has gotten at least one shot so far. But that’s still a long way from reaching the county’s goal of getting 650,000 to 750,000 people fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.
Dr. Rais Vohra, interim health officer for the Fresno County Department of Public Health, said Friday that since the first vaccine doses arrived locally in mid-December, more than 320,000 people have received at least one shot. Additionally, almost 88,000 residents have been “fully vaccinated” – either receiving shots of the two-dose Moderna or Pfizer medications, or a shot of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The fully vaccinated now include about 42,000 senior citizens age 65 and older, Vohra said.
Health department director David Pomaville added that more vaccine is on the way. Next week’s allocation from the California Department of Public Health is 39,000 doses. That doesn’t include vaccines that are being authorized by state or federal health officials to retail pharmacies that are now providing shots, or hospital or clinic organizations such as Kaiser Permanente or Adventist Health that operate in multiple counties, and other entities that are receiving direct allocations.
As vaccine manufacturers continue to ramp up their production capacity, “very soon we’re going to have such an oversupply that you’ll be able to just go up and get a vaccine,” Vohra said Friday. “It’s just a matter of weeks before we open up and expand eligibility to everyone over (age) 16.”
People who are currently eligible for coronavirus shots include medical professionals and health care workers; seniors age 65 or older; people who work in education, childcare, food and agriculture industries; transportation workers; and people ages 16 to 64 who have underlying health conditions that put them at serious risk of complications or death from COVID-19.
The pace at which new cases are arising in Fresno County has shrunk from an average of more than 900 a day two months ago to a seven-day average of under 119 per day as of Friday – or a rate of about 11.5 daily new cases for every 100,000 residents.
Still, the county remains shy of a benchmark of 10 daily cases per 100,000 residents to advance to a less restrictive tier in the state’s program for businesses and activities to reopen from measures aimed at reducing the spread of the virus.
On Friday, the Fresno County and state health departments reported 129 new coronavirus cases confirmed through testing. That amounts to more than 2,460 cases since the start of March, and almost 98,000 people who have had COVID-19 – whether or not they experienced any symptoms – at some point since the first local cases were identified 12 months ago.
Fresno County had not acknowledged any additional deaths by Friday afternoon. Since March 2020, 1,546 deaths have been blamed on the coronavirus in Fresno County as reported on official death certificates.
Also on Friday, Vohra said he was notified a day earlier that three Fresno County residents have tested positive for the B.1.1.7 variant of coronavirus, one of a growing number of variants circulating around the world. All three, who were tested in late February and early March, had the variant that emerged in December in the United Kingdom.
Over the past few months, the U.K. variant has spread to more than 200 countries worldwide. At least 265 cases have been identified in California as of March 11, according to state health officials.
Health officials in neighboring Kings County last week confirmed that two residents had contracted COVID-19 variants: one with the B.1.1.7 U.K. variant, the other with the B.1.429 variant that has emerged in California.
Around the Valley
Neighboring central San Joaquin Valley counties also issued case updates on Friday:
Kings County: 18 new cases, 22,459 to date; no additional deaths, 237 to date. State prisons in Avenal and Corcoran have accounted for more than 7,200 of the confirmed cases and 17 deaths.
Madera County: 15 new cases, 15,788 to date; no additional deaths, 226 to date. Almost 2,460 of the cases are associated with state prisons near Chowchilla.
Mariposa County: one new case, 401 to date; no additional deaths, seven to date.
Merced County: 55 new cases, 30,142 to date; no additional deaths, 428 to date.
Tulare County: 30 new cases, 48,770 to date; two additional deaths, 793 to date.
Valleywide, more than 215,400 people have had COVID-19 since the first local cases were reported in March 2020. Among those residents, 3,237 have died from the disease.
