Overall outlook, mixed, improving for Tulare County
CVS on Westwood to offer testing; 2 more deaths at Sierra View
The overall COVID-19 statistics reported by Tulare County Health and Human Services on Thursday was more encouraging than what the department had been reporting over the previous couple of days.
And the overall outlook for Tulare County looks to be mixed, but overall improving, according to a new state model unveiled this week by Governor Gavin Newsom.
There’s a new metric that measures the increase of the spread of COVID-19. Counties above 1 show an increase while counties below 1 show a decrease.
Tulare County Health and Human Services director Tim Lutz stated at the Tulare County Board of Supervisors meeting the county’s number was 1.16. But on Thursday, that number fell to 1.06. The state number is also 1.06. Only two counties in the state were measured to be “likely increasing rapidly,” Merced
and Marin.
But the state model also has an ominous number of projected deaths to happen in Tulare County due to COVID-19.
Tulare County Health and Human Services reported one more death due to COVID-19, bringing the total of deaths due to COVID-19 in Tulare County to 119. And the state model projects the county will have 190 deaths by July 25.
The new state models can be found at https://calcat.covid19.ca.gov/ cacovidmodels/
At Tuesday’s board meeting, Lutz provided more specific data on the deaths when the county was at 113.
He stated 91 of the 113 deaths were related to nursing homes. He added no one under the age of 41 has died of COVID-19, while 102 deaths were ages 65 and older and 11 deaths were ages 41-64.
While the number of overall cases increased by more than 100, the number of recoveries also increased by more than 100. And there was a slight decrease in active cases on Thursday after a rise in active cases over the previous couple of days.
There have now been 3,646 COVID-19 cases in Tulare County, an increase of 113 over the 3,533 that was reported on Wednesday.
The department reported one more death due to COVID-19, bringing the total of deaths due to COVID-19 in Tulare County to 119. At Tuesday’s Tulare County
Board of Supervisors meeting, Tulare County Health and Human Services director Tim Lutz provided more specific data on the deaths when the county was at 113.
He stated 91 of the 113 deaths were related to nursing homes. He added no one under the age of 41 has died of COVID-19, while 102 deaths were ages 65 and older and 11 deaths were ages 41-64.
The number of recoveries in Tulare County increased by 118. There
have been 2,736 people who have recovered after testing positive for COVID-19. There were 2,618 recoveries reported on Wednesday.
There are now 791 active COVID-19 cases in Tulare County, down from 797 on Wednesday.
The number of hospitalizations in Tulare County due to COVID-19 continues to rise at 56. Of the 56, 11 are in intensive care. The number of confirmed nursing home COVID-19 cases has also risen to 416.
The number of cases that have been in the Porterville area has risen to 486. There have been 17 cases in Tipton, 78 cases in Pixley and 16 cases in Terra Bella. The official tally for Lindsay is 185 cases.
There have been 550 cases in Tulare and 526 cases in Dinuba. There have been seven cases in foothill-mountain communities, 36 cases in Strathmore, 123 cases in Earlimart, 153 cases in Orosi, 11 cases in Richgrove, 45 cases in Exeter, 13 cases in Goshen, 20 cases in Traver, 32 cases in Woodlake, 11 cases in the Reedley area and 11 cases in Orange Cove.
In Visalia, there have been 429 cases in one region, 338 cases in another region and 349 cases in a third region.
There have been 52 cases reported as travel-related, 1,647 due to person-to-person contact and 1,947 are under investigation.
There have been 410 cases ages 0-17, 517 ages 18-25, 898 ages 26-40, 1,178 ages 41-64 and 643 ages 65 and older.
The number of those in Tulare County who are under self-quarantine and being monitored by public health officials remains about the same at 985.
With a population of about 470,000 people, Tulare County has had a rate of nearly 7.4 cases per 1,000 or .74 percent. The doubling time in Tulare County — the amount of days in which it would take for cases to double — remains relatively high which means the curve of cases is still relatively flat. The doubling time in Tulare County was 20.8 days as of Wednesday.
The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases at Sierra View Medical Center also continues to rise and was at 76 as of 5:00 p.m. Thursday, including 17 inpatient COVID-19 cases. As of Thursday Sierra View has had 15 deaths due to COVID-19.
As of Wednesday, Sierra View has had 2,074 tests conducted while there have been 8,635 tests conducted at the Tulare County testing lab.
CVS TO OFFER TESTING
Porterville’s CVS pharmacy on Westwood will begin offering drive-thru COVID-19 testing today. The Porterville CVS is one of 35 additional test sites selected to begin offering the testing today. It’s one of the locations added to the 107 CVS testing locations already previously opened in California.
Eighty-one percent of CVS’S testing sites in California are located in counties that service communities with the great need for support based on the Centers for Disease Control’s Social Vulnerability Index. The index tracks a variety of census variables including poverty, lack of access to transportation and crowded housing that may weaken a community’s ability to prepare for and recover from hazardous events like natural disasters and disease outbreaks.
Self-swab tests will be available to individuals meeting CDC criteria, in addition to state and age guidelines. Patients must register in advance at Cvs.com to schedule an appointment. Patients will be required to stay in their cars and will be directed to the pharmacy drive-thru window or a location in the parking lot at a few stores, where they will be provided with a test kit and given instructions, and a CVS Pharmacy team member will observe the selfswab process to ensure it’s done properly. Tests will be sent to an independent, third-party lab for processing, and the results will be available in approximately three days.
Testing won’t take place inside any CVS retail locations.