-July 24,2020-
Kern County s COVID -19 case has gone from around 150 new cases to 10 times that number on July 22 after hitting 1000 a day as of July 21.
bakerfield.com called the increase “astounding”.
“An astounding 1,120 new COVID-19 cases were reported in Kern County Wednesday, a nearly tenfold increase over the number of daily cases reported in recent weeks.
It’s not just jaw-dropping by our own measure. Kern has had the second- or third-highest number of daily cases of any county statewide in the past several days, behind only Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.
Why are Kern’s numbers so high?
It appears to be caused by a confluence of factors including high demand for testing, backlogs in processing tests, both at labs and when results are received by the county, and the plain fact there is more widespread transmission of the disease in the community.
Kern County Public Health Services Department said in a statement explaining the high case counts:
“Over the last several weeks we have observed a significant increase in testing at our county and state testing sites. Some of our sites have experienced a four-fold increase that has been sustained over the last few weeks.
“Contracted labs (Quest and Westpac) have notified us that they are experiencing shortages with testing supplies and laboratory reagent and their turnaround time is extended with results not being received for 7 days or more in many instances.”