KERN COUNTY, Calif. (KERO) — With the current surge, Kern County will have 22 additional staffing nurses after resource requests to the state with 90 nurses available through mid-October, according to Brynn Carrigan, director of Kern Public Health.
The announcement was made during Tuesday's Kern County Board of Supervisors meeting.
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Kern COVID-19 tracker: 235,765 total cases, 2,107 deaths
Additionally, six strike team members totaling 33 emergency medical technicians are in Kern and have agreed to a one week extension to stay, according to Kern Public Health. 23 Nation Guard members also remain in Kern County to help with the surge.
Due to an increase in people seeking COVID testing, from the surge and also as mandated for some California events, there will be three new free testing sites in Kern: One in Bakersfield, Delano and Tehachapi. Kern Public Health hasn't revealed where the testing sites will be located.
This week Kern County also reached a milestone of having 50% of the eligible population have been fully vaccinated against COVID, according to Carrigan.
Over the past 14 days, 98.3% of all positive cases were among those who are unvaccinated, according to Kern Public Health.
There are 894 people who have tested positive for COVID 90 days after an initial positive test which means its likely they've been reinfected, said Carrigan.
Only .21% of fully vaccinated have had a post vaccination infection, while .65% of residents who aren't vaccinated have had a reinfection, according to Kern Public Health.
Kern County Public Health Announces Latest COVID-19 Facts
- There are 349 newly reported confirmed cases in Kern County bringing our total confirmed cases to date to 138,233.
- There are no new deaths being reported today and a total of 1,540 COVID-19 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
- The 14-day case rate is 30.77 per 100,000.
- As of September 27, 787,180 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered to Kern County residents. 377,182 or 50% of Kern’s eligible population have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
- As of (Monday), Kern County has 263 COVID-19 related hospitalizations and 74 are in the ICU.
For more detail on the numbers, visit our COVID-19 tracker.
