Tulare County sees significant decline in active cases

Tulare County may very well be within the orange tier guidelines when the state announces its official stats for the county today once California hits its next mark for administering vaccine doses to its most disadvantaged areas.

Tulare County’s unofficial, preliminary case rate fell by .8 over the weekend and was at 4.1 per 1000,000 over a 7-day period or .0041 percent on Monday. Tulare County’s official rate was 6.3 per 100,000 last week.

If that rate falls below 6 per 100,000 when the state announces the official rate today that will put Tulare County within all of the standards that meets orange tier guidelines. Then once California administers 4 million doses to its most disadvantaged areas, Tulare County would be able to move into the orange tier.

Tulare County is now in the red tier which allows sectors to conduct indoor operations at 25 percent capacity or 100 people. Once in the orange tier, sectors in the county would be able to conduct indoor operations at 50 percent capacity or 200 people.

Tulare County Health and Human Services also reported a significant drop in active cases over the weekend. Active cases dropped by 71 over the weekend.

There are now 414 people in Tulare County who have tested positive for COVID-19.

The health department also reported a relatively low increase in new cases over the weekend. The county reported 45 new cases over the weekend or 15 per day. Since March 11 there have been 49,005 cases in Tulare County.

The health department did report four more deaths over the weekend, bringing the total number of deaths in Tulare County due to COVID-19 to 809. Due to different methods in how stats are measured the state has a total of 815 deaths for Tulare County. The state also has a lower total of cases at 48,218.

The county has data on 793 deaths of which 600 were ages 65 and older, 177 were ages 41-64 and 15 were ages 26-40. One child in Tulare County has died due to complications with COVID-19. Sierra View has had 160 deaths due to COVID-19.

Tulare County’s R number which measures the rate of spread of the virus also came back down slightly as it fell to .78. The county has been in the “likely decreasing” category for some time which means the rate of increase of the virus is expected to continue at a lower level than the current rate of increase. The number .78 represents the average number of people who would be infected by one infected person.

Since March 11 there have been 9,912 cases in the Porterville area, 43 cases in foothill-mountain communities, 712 cases in Terra Bella, 157 cases in Springville, 620 cases in Strathmore, 1,794 cases in Lindsay, 8,738 cases in Tulare, 4,182 cases in Dinuba, 325 cases in Richgrove, 79 cases in Alpaugh, 784 cases in Pixley, 366 cases in Tipton, 1,455 cases in Earlimart, 1,155 cases in Farmersville, 1,041 cases in Exeter, 52 cases in Three Rivers, 904 cases in Woodlake, 747 cases in Cutler, 1,468 cases in Orosi, 90 cases in Goshen, 267 cases in Traver, 60 cases in the Reedley area, 22 cases in Orange Cove and 496 cases in Ivanhoe.

In Visalia there have been 5,348 cases in one region, 3,521 cases in another region and 4,216 cases in a third region.

There have been 7,335 cases ages 0-17, 7,612 cases ages 18-25, 13,751 cases ages 26-40, 15,201 cases ages 41-64 and 5,079 cases ages 65 and older.

There have been 27,377 cases who have been Hispanic, 6,848 have been Caucasian, 989 have been Asian, 349 have been African American, 321 have been Native American, 1,619 have been multi-race and 11,502 are unknown.

With a population of about 477,000 people Tulare County has had an overall case rate of 10.3 percent.

On Monday, Sierra View reported it had two 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 four of its 20 ventilators were in use.

After a few days in which it had no employees who have tested positive for COVID-19, Sierra View has reported it now has one employee who has tested positive for COVID-19. There have been 173 employees who have recovered after testing positive for COVID-19. Sierra View has had a total of 1,189 positive tests.