Large increase continues; Sierra View reports two more deaths

The large, steady increase of COVID-19 cases in Tulare County continued on Thursday.

In addition, Tulare County Health and Human Services reported five more deaths due to COVID-19 on Thursday.

There have now been 133 deaths due to COVID-19 in Tulare County. There have been 17 deaths due to COVID-19 in Tulare County over the last nine days.

Despite the steady increase in deaths, the state model is now predicting a lower number of deaths in Tulare County due to COVID-19 in the next month days than what it had previously predicted.

The state model which had been predicting well over 200 deaths over the next month is now predicting there will be 184 deaths in Tulare County by August 1.

Sierra View Medical Center also continues to report a surge in cases and reported two more deaths as well on Thursday. Sierra View has now had 18 deaths due to COVID-19.

As of 4;30 p.m. Thursday, the hospital reported it had 99 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 22 inpatient COVID-19 cases. Sierra View did report a decline in the usage of its ICU beds as it reported five of its 10 ICU beds were in use.

Sierra View reported it has had 2,552 tests conducted as of Wednesday while 10,706 tests have been conducted at the Tulare County testing lab.

The county health department reported on Thursday there have been a total of 4,521 COVID-19 cases in Tulare County, an increase of 198 cases over the 4,323 that was reported on Wednesday.

The number of cases in Tulare County has been increasing by 150 or more cases a day this week. The number of active cases in Tulare County continues to be on the rise as well and is now up to 1,214.

But despite the steady increase in cases, Tulare

County’s R-eff value, which measures how likely cases are to increase has actually declined, according to the state model.

The county’s R-eff value is now 1.11, which still places Tulare County in the “likely increasing” category, but that value is down from where it once was in the county at 1.20.

The state’s R-eff value is 1.07, which is still in the “likely stable” category. A value around 1 means cases are stable.

One encouraging number is the number of recoveries continues to increase considerably. The number of people in Tulare County who have recovered after testing positive for COVID-19 has increased to 3,174, an increase of 88 over the 3,086 that was reported on Wednesday.

But the number of hospitalizations due to COVID-19 continues to increase in Tulare County and is now up to 73. Of those 73, 14 are in intensive care.

The number of confirmed cases at nursing homes in Tulare County is now at 442.

There have been 634 cases in the Porterville area. In Visalia, there have been 542 cases in region, 382 cases in another region and 413 cases in a third region.

The official tally for Lindsay is 217 cases. There have been 684 cases in Tulare and 622 cases in Dinuba.

There have been 23 cases in Terra Bella, 176 cases in Earlimart, 11 cases in Richgrove, 46 cases in Strathmore, nine cases in foothill/mountain communities, 17 cases in Tipton, 108 cases in Pixley, 14 cases in Goshen, 25 cases in Traver, 58 cases in Exeter, 41 cases in Woodlake, 189 cases in Orosi, 11 cases in the Reedley area and 11 cases in Orange Cove.

There have been 2,334 cases who have been Hispanic, 486 have been Caucasian, 86 have been Asian, 21 have been Africanamerican, 11 have been Native-american, 44 have been multirace and 1,539 are unknown.

There have been 59 cases reported as travel-related, 1,863 due to person-to-person contact and 2,599 are under investigation.

There have been 520 cases ages 0-17, 664 cases ages 18-25, 1,183 cases ages 26-40, 1,442 cases ages 41-64 and 712 cases 65 and older.

The number of people in Tulare County in self-quarantine who are being monitored by public health officials remained the same at 985.

The doubling time — the amount of days it would take for cases to double — which measures how flat the curve of cases is continues to fall in Tulare County and is now down to 19.1 days. With a population of about 470,000 people, Tulare County has 8.9 cases per 1,000 or .89 percent.