Nevada’s COVID cases and hospitalizations were trending higher.

COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, positivity rate trending higher

Nevada on Friday reported the biggest single-day increase in new coronavirus cases in more than three months, adding to a recent surge that has also driven hospitalizations and the test positivity rate in the state higher.

Updated data from the Department of Health and Human Services posted on the state coronavirus website showed 804 new coronavirus cases recorded over the preceding day — the biggest one-day jump since 858 new cases were reported on March 12, according to records maintained by the Review-journal. That excludes reports following weekends or holidays, when cases are not recorded and therefore inflate the following day’s numbers.

Nevada also reported three additional coronavirus fatalities in Friday’s update.

Previous sudden increases in new cases have been attributed to backlogged reports, but the Southern Nevada Health District said Friday that did not appear to be the case with the latest jump.

Of the 740 cases reported Friday in Clark County

— about 92 percent of state total — only 169 were from a backlog of cases, health district spokeswoman Jennifer Sizemore said.

A news release from the district noted that recent increases in cases and the county’s test positivity rate should serve as a “reminder for the public that the pandemic is not over.”

“As our community began the process of reopening, this increase in cases is not unexpected. However, it is preventable,” District Health Officer Dr. Fermin Leguen stated in the release. “There are many preventive measures people can do to protect themselves from COVID-19 and to keep the virus from spreading.”

The health district urged Nevadans to continue to get vaccinated if they have not done so already. The vaccines also protect people against the more-contagious variants that are circulating in the state, the health district said.

Friday’s update pushed

COVID-19 totals in the state to 331,614 cases and 5,667 deaths since the pandemic began.

New cases remained significantly higher than the 14-day moving average of 197 daily reported cases,

which has been trending higher since reaching a recent low of 132 on June 5. Deaths also remained higher than the average of two daily reported fatalities during the same time period.

State officials have said that it is normal for daily figures to be higher than the moving averages due to delayed reports and redistributed data. State and county health agencies frequently redistribute the data after it is reported to better reflect the date of death or onset of symptoms, which is why the moving-average trend lines frequently differ from daily reports and are considered better indicators of the direction of the outbreak.

While the two-week average of daily reported cases has been increasing over the past three weeks, the average of daily reported deaths has held steady in the two to three range for the past month, according to state data.

The state’s two-week positivity rate, which essentially measures the percentage of people tested who were found to be infected with the virus, remained unchanged at 4.3 percent.

But Clark County’s positivity rate increased by 0.3 percentage points, reaching 4.7 percent, according to state data.

The state’s positivity rate decreased slightly at the beginning of June, but has been slowly rising again over the past week.

As of Friday’s report, there were 306 people hospitalized in Nevada with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 cases, 13 more than the day prior.

On Wednesday, Gov. Steve Sisolak noted on Twitter a recent rise in hospitalizations, adding that none of the people then hospitalized had been vaccinated.

Although hospitalization totals fluctuate day to day, state data shows that the metric has been trending upward for about two weeks. Current totals are still lower than they were during a small crest at the end of April, and hospitalizations overall have decreased dramatically since the metric’s height in late December.

All of the deaths recorded in the state on Friday occurred in Clark County, according to data from the county health district’s coronavirus website.

Totals for Clark County rose to 257,961 cases and 4,483 deaths.