‘We have too much to lose.’ Fresno’s top doc warns lax COVID attitudes could lead to surge
Fresno County businesses have more latitude to operate indoors this week under the orange tier of California’s COVID-19 program for business reopening.
Now the county’s top doctor says he hopes business operators and the public won’t abuse that greater degree of freedom.
Fresno County was promoted on Tuesday into orange Tier 3 of the state’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy, denoting “moderate” spread of coronavirus within the county. The move into the second-least restrictive tier clears the way for many business sectors to accommodate more people for indoor services than they could under the more stringent red Tier 2, representing “substantial” transmission of COVID-19 among residents.
Dr. Rais Vohra, interim health officer for the Fresno County Department of Public Health, said Thursday that he believes “that for the most part people are getting the message and trying to play by the rules.”
He acknowledged, however, that some operators either ignored or defied the rules, opening for indoor service even when Fresno County was experiencing “widespread” viral transmission under purple Tier 1 of the state’s blueprint when such activities were forbidden.
“We do have the expectation that people will follow these rules,” Vohra said. “If they don’t follow the rules, we’ll try to educate and support them to say, ‘Hey, what can we do to convince you to operate a little bit differently?’”
“We hope we’re able to reach everybody, but I know that might be an unrealistic expectation,” he added. “But that doesn’t change that these are the requirements set by the state.”
The average number of new cases arising each day in Fresno County has declined steadily over the past couple of months, allowing the California Department of Public Health to allow the county, like others in the Valley and across the state, to move into more lenient tiers of the color-coded blueprint for incremental reopening from measures put in place to hamper the spread of coronavirus and the respiratory disease it causes.
“There is that concern that people will abuse the privilege. We certainly hope people will be on their best behavior,” Vohra said. “We have too much to lose if we start going backwards towards red. And if you think that’s an abstract idea, you can look to other states and other countries that had achieved a good decline in their community spread, and then for a variety of reasons – probably the variants and a combination of reckless gatherings – they’re now experiencing a resurgence.”
“We don’t want to be in that boat,” he added. “We’ve already experienced that one time at least.”
The latest case updates
Vohra reported Thursday there were 70 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Fresno County since the previous day’s update. That pushes to 100,838 the number of people who have been infected with coronavirus since the first instances were detected in early March 2020.
Four additional fatalities from COVID-19 were also reported Thursday. The death toll from the virus in Fresno County over the past 13 months now stands at 1,654.
Elsewhere in the central San Joaquin Valley, Thursday’s updates included:
Kings County: 15 new cases, 22,811 to date; no additional deaths, 246 to date.
Madera County: Eight new cases, 16218 to date; no additional deaths, 240 to date.
Mariposa County: Two new cases, 431 to date; no additional deaths, seven to date.
Merced County: 37 new cases, 31,358 to date; no additional deaths, 454 to date.
Tulare County: 25 new cases, 49,469 to date; no additional deaths, 831 to date.
Across the six-county region, more than 221,000 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed over the past 13 months. Of those, 3,432 people lost their lives to the disease.
