City Manager Luke Serpa gave his weekly presentation to the City Council on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Serpa reported COVID-19 positive cases in the state and Fresno County are rapidly declining. He expects if the numbers keep falling there could be changes coming to the restriction tiers we are currently in.
Serpa said COVID-19 cases are also declining in Clovis. If they continue to fall, Clovis could reach the numbers it had back in the summer of last year. He mentioned that unlike other cities, Clovis didn’t have a big spike last summer and that the biggest spike was in the months of December and January.
The death rate for the county is slowly declining from its peak from last month. However, in Clovis, there was an interesting spike within the last few weeks, with 11 COVID-19 related deaths.
“Two weeks ago, we had this very high number (of deaths) and I was hoping that it was just a catch up of new data being entered into the new database…last week, it is the second highest (death toll) that we had.” Serpa said. “We certainly hope that it (deaths) continues to decline, but we are watching that closely.”
Serpa also reported that hospitalizations due to the virus were down as well. Hospitals have resumed scheduled elective procedures that were halted due to the low bed capacity.
Currently, the county is at 22.8 percent of adjusted new cases per 100,000 people and the positivity rate is at 7.9 percent. Both numbers are down from last week, the 7.9 percent actually qualifies for the red tier. However, both numbers must be below the threshold to reach the next tier.
The health equity quartile rate is currently at 10 percent, down from last week’s 12.1 percent. The San Joaquin Valley region is still in the purple tier and the state is reporting a 17.2 ICU bed availability for the region.
According to Serpa, 126,794 vaccines have been administered in Fresno County.
Fresno County will receive about 15,000 to 19,000 doses of the vaccine per week and will resume public vaccinations this week.
To sign up for the vaccine, residents can visit Fresno County’s website at https://www.co.fresno.ca.us/departments/public-health/covid-19/covid-19-vaccine-information.