Rural Nevada counties see uptick in virus deaths

After some two weeks with no increase in rural Nevada coronavirus deaths, three counties got hit this week.

Lyon County suffered two deaths from the virus, bringing its total to 10, and Churchill and Elko counties each added one for a total of four and 11, respectively.

But Douglas still has just one death from the virus and Carson City remains at eight since the pandemic began.

There are still six rural Nevada counties reporting zero deaths from the disease: Esmeralda, Eureka, Lincoln, Mineral, Pershing and Storey. One, Esmeralda, hasn’t confirmed a single infection at this point.

Those additions bring the statewide total to 1,707 as of Friday morning.

Nevada now has 88,685 confirmed cases of the virus among the 1,115,805 tests performed as of Friday. That is 716 more than the previous day with over 81 percent in Clark and 10.6 percent in Washoe.

The statewide positivity rate was at 8.4 percent over the last 14 days.

Clark, Lincoln and Lyon counties are flagged for elevated statistics. All three have positivity rates higher than 8 percent and more than 200 cases per 100,000 population in the past 30 days — thus exceeding the limits in two of the three criteria.

But Washoe, which was on the list for the past three weeks, dropped off this past week when its positivity rate fell to the 8 percent cutoff. Washoe still fails the third criterion with 511 cases per 100,000 residents in the past 30 days. That is more than double the 200 cutoff.

The 14-day rolling average of daily deaths is now down to four and the 14-day rolling average of cases 385.

The state has 469 hospitalized COVID-19 patients as of Friday morning

Carson City now has 637 infections, Churchill County 184, Douglas County 368 and Lyon 540. The 14-day positivity rate in Carson is 7.6 percent, just 3.3 percent in Churchill County, 5.3 percent in Douglas but 10.6 percent in Lyon.