PUSD puts expanding sports on hold County receive increased allocation of vaccines
Tulare County now “unofficially” meets the COVID-19 case rate standard that would allow more sports on an expanded basis in the county.
But since the county still doesn’t meet the “official” standard, Porterville Unified School District has continued to place on hold offering more sports, said PUSD superintendent Nate Nelson.
On Tuesday at the Tulare County Board of Supervisors meeting Tulare County Health and Human Services Director Tim Lutz said the county had plans to come out with guidelines as far as expanding sports offerings was concerned. On Thursday, the health department issued a statement those guidelines were forthcoming.
Tulare County Health and Human Services reported on Thursday, the county’s unofficial, preliminary rate was 12.9 cases per 100,000 residents over a 7-day period or .0129 percent. That would meet the guidelines released by the state last week of 14 or less cases per 100,000 for counties to expand sports that can be held. Counties that meet that standard can begin to offer more sports beginning today.
But Tulare County’s official case rate released by the state still doesn’t meet that standard. The county’s official case rate is 18.4 per 100,000.
So PUSD will hold off on expanding its athletic program for now. “There’s a lot of moving pieces,” said Nelson about what it will take, including the guidelines, for PUSD to offer more sports. “Right now we’re not at the rate where we can offer sports like football.”
Counties that meet the 14 per 100,000 threshold can now allow high schools and youth and adult recreation sports leagues to offer sports such as baseball and softball with far less restrictions. Those counties can also allow sports such as football, soccer and water polo, but with far greater restrictions.
Those restrictions include having to test ever participant ages 13 and older and those test results must be available 24 hours before any competition.
BY THE NUMBERS
The decline to 12.9 cases per 100,000 was a drop of 1.5 from the previous day. Tulare County is now in the most restrictive tier, the purple tier. For Tulare County to move into the next least restrictive tier, the red tier, the county must reduce its rate to 7 per 100,000.
Tulare County’s active cases actually ticked back up a little bit on Thursday. Tulare County now has 1,159 people who have tested positive for COVID-19, an increase of 47 from the previous day.
The increase in active cases was due to the fact that only seven more recoveries was reported on Thursday. There are now 45,979 people in Tulare County who have recovered after testing positive for COVID-19.
And the overall increase in cases was the lowest it has been in some time. Overall cases increased by 54 on Thursday. Since March 11 there have been 47,784 cases in Tulare County.
The number of deaths, though, continues to rise at a significant level. The health department reported seven more deaths on Thursday, bringing the total of deaths in Tulare County due to COVID-19 to 746.
The county has data on 720 deaths of which 547 were ages 65 and older, 158 were ages 41-64 and 14 were ages 26-40.
One child in Tulare County has died due to complications with COVID-19. There have been 187 deaths related to nursing homes and 532 not related to nursing homes. Sierra View Medical Center has had 152 deaths due to COVID-19.
Tulare County’s R number which measures the spread of the rate of the virus remained the same in the “likely deceasing” category at .74. That means the rate of the spread of the virus is expected to increase at a lower level than its current rate. The number .74 represents the average number of people who would be infected by one infected person.
Since March 11 there have been 9,650 cases in the Porterville area, 43 cases in foothillmountain communities, 149 cases in Springville, 688 cases in Terra Bella, 619 cases in Strathmore, 1,765 cases in Lindsay, 8,483 cases in Tulare, 4,072 cases in Dinuba, 324 cases in Richgrove, 78 cases in Alpaugh, 766 cases in Pixley, 359 cases in Tipton, 1,423 cases in Earlimart, 1,139 cases in Farmersville, 1,016 cases in Exeter, 51 cases in Three Rivers, 882 cases in Woodlake, 735 cases in Cutler, 1,413 cases in Orosi, 87 cases in Goshen, 241 cases in Traver, 56 cases in the Reedley area, 21 cases in Orange Cove and 486 cases in Ivanhoe.
In Visalia there have been 5,206 cases in one region, 3,431 cases in another region and 4,103 cases in a third region.
There have been 7,094 cases ages 0-17, 7,433 cases ages 18-25, 13,423 cases ages 26-40, 14,848 cases ages 41-64 and 4,960 cases ages 65 and older.
There have been 26,478 cases who have been Hispanic, 6,594 have been Caucasian, 949 have been Asian, 331 have been African American, 306 have been Native American, 1,581 have been multi-race and 11,545 are unknown.
There are 153 people in Tulare County under self-quarantine being monitored by public health officials.
On Friday, Sierra View reported it had nine COVID-19 patients and six patients suspected of having COVID-19. Sierra View reported seven of its 10 ICU beds were in use. Sierra View reported six of its 22 ventilators were in use.
Sierra View reported it now has two employees who have tested positive for COVID-19 and 170 employees who have recovered after testing positive for COVID-19. Sierra View has had a total of 1,119 positive tests.
With a population of