According to the Kern County Public Health Services Department, there are 179,110 COVID-19 cases in Kern County as of January 13, 2022. There have been over 1,000 daily cases from January 3 to January 7.
COVID-19 tests have been high in demand and folks are receiving their results in 5 days instead of 2 days. People are demanding to get tested to protect their loved ones.
As of January 10, Kern County has 199 COVID-19 related hospitalization and 29 are in the ICU.
As COVID-19 cases surge, Governor Newsom plans to improve the demand of statewide testing and increase medical demand for vaccines, boosters, and medical personnel with the 2.7 billion pandemic spending.
Gavin Newsom plans to keep schools open and the economy moving. There were a total of 10.9 million tests in the last 30 days just here in California for public schools and 9 million masks were sent to schools.
On Wednesday, he visited Paramount, California, where one of the 50 mobile vaccine sites throughout California is in order to highlight his COVID-19 Emergency Response Package.
Governor Newsom explains that these mobile sites will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. everyday—including weekends—to keep up with the demand of COVID-19 testing and to increase vaccines and boosters.
“We have brought out 2,363 state contract staff into the state of California over the course of the last many weeks and 1,250 more that we will be bringing in to help support our healthcare system and to support our health care workers,” said Newsom.
Dr. Mark Ghaly, explains that each pandemic wave and surge is handled differently and this wave is certainly a variant that is transvisible.
“The good news is with our great success with vaccinations even those who may have been infected before level the severity of disease that we are seeing with this particular variant is a lot lower. Yes some people are getting infected, many fewer are getting hospitalized, and certainly many fewer are dying,” said Dr. Ghaly.
The Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is now recommending that people receive a Pfizer booster shot in 5 months instead of 6 months. People who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine (2 months) or the Moderna vaccine (6 months) have not changed.
The Kern County Public Health Department recommends for people to get their vaccine, to get their booster, wear a mask indoors while in public settings, stay home while sick, and to get tested before gathering or traveling.
