Another large decrease in active cases

Maybe there isn’t a plateau when it comes to the status of COVID-19 in Tulare County, after all. And that’s a good sign for Tulare County.

Tulare County Health and Human Services reported a large drop in active cases on Friday. Active cases dropped by 56 on Friday. There are now 668 people in Tulare County who have tested positive for COVID-19.

The health department reported Tulare County’s unofficial, preliminary case rate was 9.9 per 100,000 residents over a 7-day period on Friday or .0099 percent. That’s a drop of .4 from the previous number reported.

That unofficial number would also put Tulare County under the threshold of 10 per 100,000 to move from the most restrictive tier, the purple tier, to the next least restrictive tier, the red tier, once the 40 percent threshold is met for vaccinated the county’s most disadvantaged areas. Otherwise, Tulare County would need to reduce its case rate to 7 per 100,000 to move into the red tier.

The health department reported two more deaths on Friday, bringing the total of deaths in Tulare County due to COVID-19 to 770. The county has data on 770 deaths of which 572 were ages 65 and older, 170 were ages 41-54 and 15 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 569 deaths not related to nursing homes. Sierra View Medical Center has had 157 deaths due to COVID-19.

Tulare County’s R number which measures the rate of spread of the virus continued to dip slightly and is now down to .67, putting the county in the “likely decreasing” category. That means the rate of the virus is expected to spread at a slower rate than it currently is now. The number .67 represents the average number of people who would be infected by one infected person.

The number of recoveries in Tulare County increased by 94 on Friday. There are now 46,765 people in Tulare County who have recovered after testing positive for

COVID-19.

The health department reported there were 40 new cases on Friday. Since March 11 there have been 48,203 cases in Tulare County.

There have been 9,749 cases in the Porterville area, 43 cases in foothillmountain communities, 151 cases in Springville, 619 cases in Strathmore, 699 cases in Terra Bella, 1,778 cases in Lindsay, 8,553 cases in Tulare,

4,103 cases in Dinuba, 324 cases in Richgrove, 78 cases in Alpaugh, 780 cases in Pixley, 360 cases in Tipton, 1,432 cases in Earlimart, 1,144 cases in Farmersville, 1,030 cases in Exeter, 52 cases in

Three Rivers, 889 cases in Woodlake, 737 cases in Cutler, 1,431 cases in Orosi, 89 cases in Goshen, 250 cases in Traver, 59 cases in the Reedley area, 22 cases in Orange Cove and 493 cases in Ivanhoe.

In Visalia there have been 5,268 cases in one region, 3,470 cases in another region and

4,153 cases in a third region.

There have been 7,155 cases ages 0-17, 7,495 cases ages 18-25, 13,546 cases ages 26-40, 14,976 cases ages 41-64 and 5,004 cases ages 65 and older.

There have been 26,788 cases who have been Hispanic, 6,708 have been Caucasian,

960 have been Asian, 337 have been African American, 317 have been Native American, 1,588 have been multirace and 11,505 are unknown.

There are 210 people in Tulare County under self-quarantine being monitored by public health officials.

On Friday, Sierra

View reported it had 11 COVID-19 patients and nine patients suspected of having COVID-19. Sierra View reported six of its 10 ICU beds were in use. Sierra View reported five of its 22 ventilators were in use.

Sierra View currently has no employees who have tested positive for

COVID-19. There have been 172 employees who have recovered after testing positive for COVID-19 of which six were hospitalized. Sierra View has had a total of 1,140 positive tests.

With a population of about 477,000 people, Tulare County’s overall case rate has been 10.1 percent.