St. Anne’s School ready for Monday opening

St. Anne’s School principal Kayla Trueblood said she was disappointed at first when the school couldn’t open to for K-6 grades – but only at first.

Trueblood said St. Anne’s is ready for its first day of school so to speak when it can again open for in-person instruction for K-2 grades on Monday.

St. Anne’s was one of five schools in Tulare County to be given a waiver to begin in-person instruction for grades K-2. The others were Dinuba Junior Academy, George Mccann Elementary and St. Paul’s School in Visalia and St. Aloysius Catholic School in Tulare.

Zion Lutheran School has also been given a provisional approval to begin in-person instruction for K-2 schools by Tulare County Health and Human Services. That waiver is currently being reviewed by the California Public Department of Health.

Tulare County also reached the threshold for schools that applied for waivers to provide in-person instruction for grades K-6.

Tulare County’s COVID-19 rate fell to 13.7 cases per 100,000 over a 7-day period on Friday. The standard for schools to open for K-6 grades is 14 per 100,000.

Tulare County must now maintain that rate of below 14 per 100,000 for 14 straight days for schools to open for K-6 grades.

But Trueblood said she was actually thankful St. Anne’s is opening on a smaller K-2 scale. She said it’s “more a blessing it’s on a smaller scale to make sure we get it right.”

“Oh man we’re excited for Monday,” added Trueblood. “Our teachers have been really working hard in getting our classrooms ready.”

Trueblood also said the school has been thoroughly disinfected. She described the school as being “overprepared” for Monday.

Trueblood said originally K-2 students weren’t required to wear face coverings but now all students those age will be required to wear face coverings when school begins on Monday.

For an update on the status of schools that have applied for waivers visit https:// covid19. tularecounty. ca.gov/school-resources/

BY THE NUMBERS

Tulare County health officials estimated it could be November before the county could move from the most restrictive category — purple — to the next least restrictive category — red. But based on Friday’s numbers there could be hope the county could move into the red category sooner. But county officials continue to stress residents need to remain diligent to avoid any setbacks.

The health department reported on Friday, Tulare County’s positive test rate has dropped to 9.3 percent. For the county to move into the red category that number needs to come down to 8 percent.

Tulare County’s case rate must also fall from 13.7 per 100,000 to 7 per 100,000 to move into the red category.

The county’s number of active cases continues to decline. The number of people who now have COVID-19 in Tulare is 466, a decline of 81 from the previous day.

The increase in new cases also continues to fall. The health department reported 71 new cases on Friday, bringing the total number of people in the county who have had COVID-19 to 15,114.

The number of new recoveries was twice as much as the number of new cases. There have now been 14,401 people in Tulare County who have recovered from COVID-19, an increase of 151 over the previous day.

The health department did report on more death on Friday, bringing the total number of deaths in Tulare County due to COVID-19 to 247. The state model projects Tulare County to have 286 deaths by October 11.

Tulare County’s R number which projects how fast the virus will spread continues to increase slightlysierr but remains in the “likely decreasing” area, meaning the rate of increase will be lower than its current level. The county’s R number is .87 which represents the average number of people one infected person would infect.

The health department reported the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations in Tulare County is now at 58. That number should come back down though as Visalia’s Kaweah Delta Hospital has reported a decline in COVID-19 hospitalizations after a temporary increase.

On Friday, Sierra View Medical Center reported it had 8 COVID-19 hospitalizations and two patients suspected of having COVID-19. Sierra View has had 41 deaths due to COVID-19.

Sierra View reported six of its 10 ICU beds were in use and four of its 19 ventilators were in use. The hospital reported it has two employees who have tested positive for COVID-19 and 43 employees who have recovered. Sierra View has had a total of 311 positive tests.

On Friday, Kaweah Delta reported it had 37 COVID-19 hospitalizations of which four were in ICU.

The health department reported there are 552 confirmed COVID- 19 nursing home cases in Tulare

County.

There have been 2,391 cases in the Porterville area, 154 cases in Terra Bella, 203 cases in Strathmore, 628 cases in Lindsay, 41 cases in foothill-mountain communities, 133 cases in Richgrove, 28 cases in Alpaugh, 276 cases in Pixley, 86 cases in Tipton, 626 cases in Earlimart, 2,361 cases in Tulare, 1,694 cases in Dinuba, 446 cases in Farmersville, 302 cases in Exeter, 263 cases in Woodlake, 300 cases in Cutler, 556 cases in Orosi, 40 cases in Goshen, 80 cases in Traver, 14 cases in the Reedley area and 11 cases in Orange Cove.

In Visalia there have been 1,911 cases in one region, 1,043 cases in another region and 1,229 cases in a third region.

There have been 68 cases reported as travel-related, 4,964 cases due to personto-person contact and 10,082 cases are under investigation.

There have been 2,083 cases ages 0-17, 2,391 cases ages 18-25, 4,365 cases ages 26-40, 4,708 cases ages 41-64 and 1,559 cases ages 65 and older.

There have been 8,541 cases who have been Hispanic, 1,435 have been Caucasian, 262 have been Asian, 61 have been African American, 37 have been Native American, 282 have been multirace and 4,496 are unknown.

There are 395 people in Tulare County who are under self-quarantine and being monitored by public health officials.

Tulare County’s doubling time — the amount of days it would take for cases to double — went back up again, indicating a continued flattening of the curve of cases. As of Thursday, Tulare County’s doubling time was 383.1 days.

With a population of about 470,000 people, Tulare County has had an overall rate of about 3.2 cases per 100 residents or 3.2 percent.