City Manager Luke Serpa gave an update on the status of the city of Clovis regarding COVID-19 at Monday night’s city council meeting.
Serpa mentioned that there has been a considerable spike in the number of day-over-day new cases in the state.
This spike forced Governor Gavin Newsom to re-issue restrictions and to bring most of the state back into the purple tier. Fresno County had been in the red tier, but has reverted back to the purple tier as of Monday.
This means that only essential businesses can stay open. However, there are some guidelines for salons, tattoo shops and other businesses like them to work at a 25 percent capacity.
All indoor dining will be shut down and no church indoor services will be allowed while in the purple tier.
Serpa said that things are not going well with the pandemic and that we are approaching levels of infections that we saw during the summer. He also said that the county is not at the state’s level, but that it is rising at a concerning level.
In Clovis, the infections have more than doubled. However, this is due to a nursing facility that had an outbreak of the infection. There are no new deaths in Clovis, but that might change in the next few days due to the rise in infections in the city.
The county is at 14.7 cases per every 100 thousand for the adjusted daily new cases and is at 6.6 percent of positive test rate. The Health Equity Metric in the county is at 8.3 percent and the county is in the purple tier for the upcoming week.
Serpa also mentioned that the state is considering a curfew in order to slow down the spread of the virus and bring down the positive test rate.
“It is concerning, we are coming into the holidays which is a time of travel and family gatherings which was concerning even without the number rising,” Serpa said. “The concern is that it will really spread during the holiday gatherings.”