Tulare County metrics continue to improve

But deaths still high — and another surge possible

Tulare County continues to head in the right direction when it comes to its overall status as far as COVID-19 is concerned.

But deaths due to COVID-19 in Tulare County continue to be high and there’s concern about mutated variants of the virus that could cause another surge. That was the report presented by Tulare County Health and Human Services Director Tim Lutz during his presentation on the status of COVID-19 in in the county at Tuesday’s Tulare County Board of Supervisors meeting.

Lutz reported another significant drop in the last week in Tulare County’s case rate. As measure by the state, Tulare County’s official rate is 47.3 cases per 100,000 residents over a 7-day period, Lutz said. That’s down from 60.8 per 100,000 last week.

Tulare County’s unofficial, preliminary case rate also continued to fall, although slightly on Tuesday. The unofficial case rate is 43 per 100,000, a decline of 1.9 from the previous day.

Tulare County is now in the most restrictive tier, the purple tier. For Tulare County to move into the next least restrictive tier, it must reduce its case rate to 7 per 100,000.

Tulare County must also reduce its overall positive test rate and its equity metric positive test rate for its most disadvantaged areas to 8 percent to move into the red tier. The county continues to make progress toward that standard as well.

The county’s overall positive test rate fell to 12.1 percent from 16 percent where it was last week, Lutz said. In the last week, Tulare County’s equity

metric positive test rate fell from 19.1 percent to 14.4 percent, Lutz said.

The number of overall cases in the county increased by 1,468 during the last week. That’s the lowest weekly increase in eight weeks, Lutz said.

The increase in cases reported by Lutz on Tuesday was also the lowest daily increase in sometime. The number of cases increased by 155 on Tuesday from Monday. On Monday, the health department reported an increase of 725 cases over the weekend. Since March 11 there have been 45,398 cases in Tulare County.

The number of active cases continues to fall in Tulare County. The number of active cases declined by 250 from the previous day. There are now 2,868 people in Tulare County who9 have tested positive for COVID-19.

Another positive development that Lutz reported is Tulare County hospitals avoided having to go to a crisis standard of care in which they would have had to begin essentially rationing care.

Tulare County’s R number which measures the rate of the spread of the virus also remains at .79, putting the county in the “likely decreasing” category. That means the the spread of the virus is expected to increase at a lower rate than its current level. The number .79 represents the average number of people who would be infected by one infected person.

But there continues to be a significant rise in the number of deaths. Tulare County now has 606 deaths due to COVID-19.

That’s a one-day increase of eight and the number of deaths increased by 54 over the last week. That’s the highest weekly increase since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sierra View Medical Center has had 130 deaths due to COVID-19. The county has date on 588 deaths of which 452 were ages 65 and older, 122 were ages 41-64, 13 were ages 26-40.

One child in Tulare County has died due to COVID-19. There have been 171 deaths related to nursing homes and 417 deaths not related to nursing homes.

“Definitely our deaths continue to be very high,” Lutz said. Lutz added the number of deaths will “continue to be high for the next few weeks.”

Lutz also talked about mutated variants of the virus that have now happened in California. While the severity of those mutated variants aren’t any greater than the original virus, Lutz said the mutated variants are a lot more infectious. Because of that he said another surge could happen in the late winter or early spring.

So he said residents need to be “continually diligent toward the virus.”

SCHOOLS

Lutz reported as far as reopening schools again for all students remained at a stalemate on the state level. “Unfortunately the ones who are suffering the most are our students at home,” he said.

BY THE NUMBERS

The number of recoveries increased by 397 on Tuesday. There are now 41,924 people in Tulare County who have recovered after testing positive for COVID-19.

There have been 6,693 cases ages 0-17, 7,070 cases ages 18-25, 12,794 cases ages 26-40, 14,111 cases ages 41-64 and 4,704 cases ages 65 and older.

There have been 24,904 cases who have been Hispanic, 6,125 who have been Caucasian, 894 have been Asian, 318 have been African American, 284 have been Native American, 1,481 have been multi-race and 11,392 are unknown.

There are 399 people in Tulare County under self-quarantine being monitored by public health officials.

On Tuesday Sierra View reported it had 30 COVID-19 patients and five patients suspected of having COVID-19. Sierra View reported all 10 of its ICU beds were in use. Sierra View reported 11 of its 25 ventilators were in use.

Sierra View reported it now has six employees who have tested positive for COVID-19, and all six are hospitalized. There have been 159 employees who have recovered after testing positive for COVID-19. Sierra View has had a total of 1,027 positive tests.

With a population of about 470,000 people Tulare County has had a rate of 9.5 cases per 100 residents or 9.5 percent.