Local COVID-19 hospitalizations drop

The “surge” of COVID-19 cases that recently filled the Intensive Care Unit beds at Adventist Health Tehachapi Valley hospital appeared to subside soon after the Thanksgiving Day holiday.

The hospital has been reporting its census of COVID-19 cases on an intermittent basis on Facebook since Oct. 8. The latest post was on Nov. 24, when there were 10 cases total, with all four ICU beds in use.

On Dec. 2, Josh Pierce, director of community integration for the hospital, said its marketing department was making the Facebook posts following incident command meetings.

“As our volume has dropped, we will only post numbers and information following our meetings,” he said, noting that the meeting schedule has been reduced to monthly because facilities are no longer in a surge.

Eighty-five additional cases of COVID-19 were recorded by Kern County Public Health for the Tehachapi (93561) ZIP code between Nov. 26 and Dec. 5. These cases brought the total to 5,758 since the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020.

Of those cases, 2,031 are recovered and 3,383 are presumed recovered, according to county data. The difference between the total cases and recovered or presumed recovered is 344. However, the county does not release death data from COVID-19 due to privacy concerns, so it’s unknown whether the 344 represents the total deaths or is some combination of deaths and lack of case information.

According to the health department, the population of the 93561 ZIP code is 34,271.

Updates to the ZIP code data can be found online at https://bit.ly/3dkCqu7 (once map loads, click on the ZIP code).