It’s still here and it’s still a killer. Valley enters fourth year of COVID-19 pandemic

Tim Sheehan

Three years ago, health officials in Madera County confirmed the first case of COVID-19 in the central San Joaquin Valley, an older man who caught the virus during a cruise ship vacation.

Three years later, the coronavirus pandemic persists, now entering a fourth year of infections, hospitalizations and fatalities across Fresno, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced and Tulare counties. Since that first case in Madera, followed a day later by the confirmation of a case in Fresno County, more than 612,000 Valley residents have been infected with COVID-19 at some point.

And in its wake, the virus and its respiratory complications have also claimed the lives of almost 6,400 Valley residents, including nearly 3,000 in Fresno County alone.

The frequency of new cases and deaths over the past few months is dramatically lower now than it was during several seasonal peaks, the worst of which struck in the winter of 2021-22 despite the arrival of coronavirus vaccines that first became widely available in mid-2021. At that time in late January 2022, Fresno County reported almost 18,000 new cases in a single week, among nearly 39,000 cases across the five-county region.

Still, in the week ending March 4 — the most recent full week for which data is available from the California Department of Public Health —more than 500 new laboratory-confirmed cases cropped up in Fresno County, and just over 1,000 new cases were reported Valleywide.

By the numbers, the coronavirus tally includes:

  • Fresno County: 294,108 confirmed cases, 2,994 deaths, and 101 people currently hospitalized. About 61% of Fresno County residents have been fully vaccinated, while 32.5% of residents have received no vaccine doses at all.

  • Kings County: 62,826 confirmed cases, 481 deaths, five people currently hospitalized; 45.5% of residents fully vaccinated, 48.3% unvaccinated.

  • Madera County: 46,225 confirmed cases, 378 deaths, five people currently hospitalized; 55.1% of residents fully vaccinated, 38.7% unvaccinated.

  • Mariposa County: 4,545 confirmed cases, 42 deaths, five people currently hospitalized; 51.7% of residents fully vaccinated, 39.8% unvaccinated.

  • Merced County: 76,442 confirmed cases, 903 deaths, 11 people currently hospitalized; 55.4% of residents fully vaccinated, 37.2% unvaccinated.

  • Tulare County: 128,286 confirmed cases, 1,577 deaths, 32 people currently hospitalized; 53.8% of residents fully vaccinated, 39.8% unvaccinated.

Despite the widespread availability of vaccines, 2022 brought the largest number of cases to Fresno and the Valley – the result of new, more contagious variants of the virus and stagnation in the percentages of residents getting their shots and, later, booster vaccines.

Fresno reported 65,390 cases in 10 months of 2020, 84,546 in 2021, and 135,517 cases in 2022. Across the other four Valley counties, there were 79,218 cases in 2020, 99,971 in 2021, and 139,917 in 2022.

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