Active cases back up; ICU availability still at 0 percent

Tuesday has generally become the worst day of the week when it comes to the stats reported on the status of COVID-19 in Tulare County and this past Tuesday was no different.

The state reported ICU availability in the San Joaquin Valley remained at 0 percent on Tuesday. In portions of the Valley there are more ICU patients than ICU beds that are available.

The Valley continues to be under a stay-athome and it’s accepted that order will remain in the Valley for some time. The order lasts through at least December 27 and Governor Gavin Newsom said on Monday the order will “very likely” be extended past December 27. For the order to be lifted the entire Valley’s ICU availability must return to at least 15 percent.

When the stay-at-home order is lifted Tulare

County will return to the most restrictive tier, the purple tier, and it’s been accepted the county will remain in the purple tier indefinitely as well. As expected Tulare County moved further away moving into to the next least restrictive tier, the red tier, on Tuesday.

The state reported on Tuesday Tulare County’s adjusted rate had continued to increase to 60.5 per 100,000 residents over a 7-day period. For Tulare County to move into the red tier that number must be reduced to 7 per 100,000.

And the county continues to move further away from the red tier with it comes to its overall positive test rate and its equity metric positive test rate for its most disadvantaged areas, which both also continued to rise.

Tulare County’s overall positive test rate rose to 17.6 percent and its equity metric positive test rate rose to 19.7 percent. Both of those rates need to come down to eight percent for Tulare County to move into the red tier.

Tulare County Health and Human Services also reported six more deaths on Tuesday, bringing the number of deaths in Tulare County due to COVID-19 to 360. The county has data on 353 deaths of which 273 were ages 65 and older, 74 were ages 41-64 and six were under the age of 41. There have been 128 deaths related to nursing homes and 225 deaths not related to nursing homes.

After a a couple of days in which the number of active cases declined, the number of active cases went back up significantly again on Tuesday, by 266. There are now 5,256 people in Tulare County who have tested positive for COVD-19.

The number of recov

eries increased by 415. There are now 24,435 people in Tulare County who have recovered after testing positive for COVID-19.

But there was a huge increase in the number of new cases as the health department reported 687 new cases on Tuesday. It should be noted the largest number of cases is normally reported on Tuesdays as that’s the day in which the recording of cases from the weekend is finished. Since March 11 there have been 30,051 cases in Tulare County.

And a day after Tulare County’s R number which measures the rate of spread of the virus returned to the “likely increasing” category, on Tuesday it was back in the “likely increasing rapidly” category. Tulare County’s R number is 1.3 which represents the average number of people who would be infected by one infected person. The state’s R number is 1.16.

There were two stats that provided a silver lining as far as the status of COVID-19 in the county. Tulare County’s unofficial, preliminary case rate — which is still extremely high — continued to move in a better direction as it has in the past few days.

The health department reported a drop of .6 which is the first decline in a while. The rate is now 83.4 per 100,000.

And Tulare County’s ICU availability improved. The health department reported on Tuesday seven ICU beds — 13 percent — werer available in Tulare County, an increase of three over the previous day.

Since March 11 there have been 5,690 cases in the Porterville area, 62 cases in Springville, 392 cases in Terra Bella, 393 cases in Strathmore, 1,083 cases in Lindsay, 62 cases in foothill- mountain communities, 215 cases in Richgrove, 5,196 cases in Tulare, 2,813 cases in Dinuba, 57 cases in Alpaugh, 519 cases in Pixley, 199 cases in Tipton, 1,018 cases in Earlimart, 769 casers in Farmersville, 664 cases in Exeter, 30 cases in Three Rivers, 518 cases in Woodlake, 500 cases in Cutler, 928 cases in Orosi, 64 cases in Goshen, 160 cases in Travert, 29 cases in the Reedley area and 11 cases in Orange Cove.

In Visalia there have been 3385 cases in one region, 2,113 cases in another region and 2,606 cases in a third region.

There have been 4,255 cases ages 0-17, 4,752 cases ages 18-25, 8,668 cases ages 26-40, 9,287 cases ages 41-64 and 3,085 cases ages 65 and older.

There have been 16,774 cases who have been Hispanic, 3,686 have been Caucasian, 570 have been Asian, 179 have been African American, 141 have been Native American, 823 have been multi-race and 7,878 are unknown.

There are 515 people in Tulare County under self-quarantine being monitored by public health officials.

On Tuesday Sierra View Medical Center reported it had 32 COVID-19 patients and 10 patients suspected of having COVID-19. Sierra View reported eight of its 10 ICU beds were in use and 9 of its 23 ventilators were in use.

Sierra View has had 75 deaths due to COVID-19. Sierra View reported it has 23 employees who have now tested positive for COVID-19 and four have been hospitalized.

There have been 97 employees who have recovered after testing positive for COVID-19. Sierra View has had a total of 685 positive cases.

With a population of about 470,000 people, Tulare County has had a rate of 6.3 cases per 100 residents or 6.3 percent.