The Fresno County Department of Public Health announced Wednesday the number of positive COVID-19 cases has risen to 82.
It’s an increase of 14 for Fresno County as the numbers continue to rise throughout the Central Valley.
Twenty cases are travel related, 11 are from person-to-person contact, 14 are from community spread and 37 are under investigation.
Dr. Rais Vohra, Interim Health Officer for the FCDPH, said the department is actively working to map out where clusters of high-infection rates pop up throughout the Valley in order to intervene in certain communities.
“I think what the CDC came out with today is very informative,” Vohra said. “What they basically said was that there’s really no area that can be considered no-risk anymore. So even if you have not heard of any cases in your city or in your neighborhood, then there’s still a possibility that you might have either community transmission or it might be happening in the next few days.
“Really they’ve taken away the areas that they considered no-risk, and the scenarios that they considered no-risk, and have now moved those over into unknown risk, which I think speaks volumes about how seriously they consider this epidemic nationwide. And certainly our area is not being spared.”
The department announced that 66 of the total cases are located in the Fresno/Clovis metro area, and the other 16 are located in the rest of the county.
Vohra said that it is standard practice to not report low numbers in each individual city, but he advised individuals to practice social distancing and to not let their guard down just because they are not hearing of a high number of positive cases in their city.
“Just assume it’s in your neighborhood,” Vohra said. “Don’t let the numbers change what you’re already doing. If you’re not already doing social distancing because you’re waiting for somebody on your street to catch this bug, you’re going to be behind. Please start doing social distancing as soon as you can.
“If it helps you, assume that your neighbors already have it and stay isolated from them as much as you can. I really think the messaging about the numbers should really be disconnected from the messaging that we’re trying to get out about social distancing, because obviously it’s much more important to do social distancing before this problem gets out of control.”
