California’s Central Valley is Still Being Hammered by COVID

Across most of California, coronavirus cases are plummeting. California added 32,566 cases for the week ending Sunday, a decline of 24.5%. Declines were even steeper in San Bernardino, Riverside, and Sacramento counties.

But things look very different in the state’s Central Valley. The region is still being hammered by the Delta variant thanks in large part to lower vaccination rates.

In Fresno County, understaffed hospitals have been so clogged that ambulance crews have stopped transporting people unless they have a life-threatening emergency.

In Tulare County, a Visalia hospital — which has been treating more COVID-19 patients in recent days than any other medical facility in the state — declared an internal disaster last week on a day 51 patients in the emergency room waited for a bed to open up.

And this week, sparsely populated Kings County, which has one of California’s lowest vaccination rates, had one of the state’s highest per capita COVID-19 hospitalization rates. — Los Angeles Times 

The San Joaquin Valley experienced the state’s highest rate of COVID-19 hospitalizations this week. Kings County, which has the third worst vaccination rate statewide, is the leading county for hospitalizations per capita.

Gov. Gavin Newsom recently visited the region to urge vaccine-hesitant residents to get their vaccines and/or boosters before winter when California is fearing a possible surge.