BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — Kern County Public Health announced 124 new cases of COVID-19 Monday morning during their press briefing. That brings the total to 5,369. Of those, 82 people have died from the virus, and 3,695 residents have recovered.
According to Public Health, 92-percent of the over 72,000 tests administered have come back negative.
Public Health Director Matt Constantine said he's continuing to ask the state for more help when it comes to our skilled nursing facilities.
"There is a couple of fundamental issues. Infection control continues to be a concern to us. Obviously, with numbers increasing, infection control is not adequate. We need to address that," said Constantine. "Some of the data gathering and reporting is still not perfect. We want that to be reinforced by the state so that the skilled nursing facilities are reporting accurate numbers to the state on a daily basis so we can track and find early indications of any outbreaks."
Public health also addressed if the increase in cases has anything to do with large holiday gatherings over the weekend.
"What we have noticed in our contact tracing is that we do have a number of people who identified non-household contacts, people who they are in close contact with outside of their homes," explained epidemiaologist Kim Hernandez. "We know that people are gathering. We haven't identified a large community event per se but that people as they are interviewed they have mentioned tehy visited someone or they had people over to their home and that expands our contact tracing."
