Coronavirus update, April 13: Second death in Stanislaus County; jail releases expected today

Here is the latest on the coronavirus pandemic as it relates to Stanislaus County:

Latest facts on COVID-19 tests in Modesto area

Stanislaus County reported its second death Saturday afternoon. It now has 131 people who tested positive for the virus and 2,405 who tested negative. Thirty-seven of the positive cases were hospitalized, and 77 people have recovered.

Of those who tested positive, 71 are male and 60 female. Four are 17 or younger, 72 are between 18 and 49, 33 are between 50 and 64, and 22 are 65 or older.

Modesto has 60 of the positive cases, 22 are in unincorporated areas, 13 are in Ceres, 10 are in Patterson, seven are in Turlock, six are in Riverbank, and five are in Waterford. The other cases were not reported by city because of medical privacy rules regarding smaller cities.

• San Joaquin County has 16 COVID-19-related deaths among 273 cases.
  
  
• Merced County is at 65 cases, with three deaths. Of those who tested positive, 36 are female and 29 male. Two are 17 or younger, 43 are between 18 and 49, 13 are between 50 and 64, and seven are 65 or older. Thirty-three are on the east side and 32 are on the west side of the county.
  
  
• Tuolumne County has two cases and no deaths.
  
  
• Mariposa County has no cases, with a total of 76 people tested. Of those tests, 71 have returned negative; five are pending.
  
  

As of Monday morning, there were 23,300 confirmed cases in California and 681 deaths, according to the Los Angeles Times. There were 555.371 U.S. cases and 22.056 deaths, according to the New York Times.

Here is the state tracker.

Stanislaus County, Modesto weekend wrapup

On Monday between 150 and 350 inmates, or as much as a quarter of the jail population in Stanislaus County, will be released from custody as a result of a statewide emergency bail schedule intended to slow or prevent the spread of COVID-19 among the incarcerated population. Read Erin Tracy’s story.

The failure of a Modesto business puts a human face on impacts of the coronavirus and COVID-19 on the economy of Stanislaus County. Read Garth Stapley’s column.

Modesto expects to place portable bathrooms in the city for homeless people after closing its approximately 72 parks and their bathrooms because of the new coronavirus pandemic. See Kevin Valine’s story.

Farmers have been left out of coronavirus economic relief so far, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says they’re a priority in additional COVID-19 stimulus bills. Milk prices dropped. Restaurants, schools closed. See Katy Irby’s story.

Dr. Julie Vaishampayan, county public health officer, shed more light on the gradual, yet steady increase of confirmed coronavirus cases in Stanislaus County. The current trend is in-home transmission. Read Ken Carlson’s story.

Stanislaus County, California, reported its second death from the coronavirus on Saturday, April 11, 2020. The patients were both adults — male and female — with underlying medical conditions, the Public Health Department said. Read John Holland’s story.

Around the San Joaquin Valley, California, U.S.

• Seven men on a road trip to Santa Cruz, California, now face up to $7,000 in fines for violating coronavirus lockdown orders, police say on Twitter. “Everyone should know by now that this is not the time to meetup and party,” police wrote in the Saturday post “Officers cited seven $1000 tickets for #ShelterInPlace Violations to help these guys remember their time in Santa Cruz.”
• Doctors and nurses across the world are facing new threats of discrimination, attack and abuse as they work on the front line in the battle against coronavirus. Many of these attacks are allegedly sparked by fear that health care workers are exposing others to the virus.
• People who have recovered from COVID-19 may not be out of the woods — the illness could leave them with long-term damage to vital organs, experts say. The respiratory illness is caused by the novel coronavirus, which is thought to spread person-to-person through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
• If you test negative for coronavirus, does that mean you don’t have it? Not necessarily, some doctors say. “False-negative test results — tests that indicate you are not infected, when you are — seem to be uncomfortably common,” Dr. Harlan M. Krumholz wrote in The New York Times.

This story was originally published April 13, 2020 at 7:35 AM with the headline "Coronavirus update, April 13: Second death in Stanislaus County; jail releases expected today."