Fresno County is getting some much-needed coronavirus testing support from the state of California.
In a teleconference on Tuesday, Fresno County Department of Public Health Interim Health Officer Dr. Rais Vohra said that the state has selected 15 counties for a high-throughput testing site.
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“This is part of the state of California’s big push to get a lot more testing done right away in the county, and what they’ve done is they’ve selected Fresno to be one of the counties that are in the first wave of getting these testing sites put in,” Vohra said.
The site will provide over 100 tests per day, bringing the county closer to Vohra’s goal of 1,500 tests per day.
“I’m very optimistic that we will be able to get to our goal of testing about 1,500 people every day to make sure that we’re identifying every single cluster and infection of the COVID across the county,” Vohra said.
Currently, Fresno County is averaging about 150 to 250 tests per day.
The total number of positive COVID-19 cases rose by 13 on Wednesday to 384. The total number of fatalities remained at seven, marking over a week since the last coronavirus-related death was announced.
Of the total cases, 43 are travel related, 138 are from person-to-person contact, 151 are from community spread and 52 are under investigation.
There have been 81 total hospitalizations in the county over the course of the pandemic, and 132 patients have fully recovered from the virus.
The county has processed 5,327 tests.
The FCDPH will hold a virtual town hall with Vohra and other health experts on Friday at 4 p.m. on Facebook, giving the community an opportunity to hear directly from the department.
As talks about reopening the community start to ramp up as the May 6 shelter-in-place order for the city of Fresno draws near, Vohra cautioned against reopening too fast and gave a reminder to keep up all of the current practices.
“Let’s reopen gracefully and really be mindful of all the things that we’ve learned that we know worked, like the physical distancing, covering your face, the good hand hygiene,” Vohra said.
“All of those have served us so well, and let’s keep all of those in place and then think about how we can reopen gracefully in a way that makes sense and keeps everyone safe. And hopefully we can come up with a process to do that together.”
