Nevada surpasses 100K coronavirus cases

Nevada’s total coronavirus cases surpassed 100,000 when the state Department of Health and Human Services reported 977 new cases on Saturday.

No new deaths were reported on Saturday, so the number of cumulative fatalities remained at 1,777, according to the department’s coronavirus website. Total cases since the start of the pandemic rose to 100,763.

The milestone comes after more than 1,000 cases were reported three times since Oct. 24. Prior to last Saturday, more than 1,000 cases hadn’t been reported in the state since Aug. 14, state data shows.

Gov. Steve Sisolak on Saturday released a statement regarding the more than 100,000 cumulative cases and urged people to continue following health safety measures.

“We are not rounding the corner in this pandemic,” Sisolak said in the statement. “Now is not the time to get complacent or to give into COVID fatigue. Especially on Nevada Day, I implore all residents to tap into their Battle Born spirit and work together to follow the public health measures, including wearing a face covering, practicing social distancing, avoiding large crowds and washing our hands frequently.”

Nevadans must decide “to take the virus seriously and practice mitigation measures – in our homes and in public places.”

“If we don’t, we will face tough choices and trade-offs that will be devastating to the livelihood of our State,” his statement said.

The state’s positivity rate, which is calculated by the Review-Journal as the total cases divided by the number of people who have been tested since the start of the pandemic, rose by 0.04 percentage points on Friday to reach 12.46 percent.

The rate has been slowly increasing since mid-September, when daily case reports also started rising. The daily reports of fatalities have not seen the same increase, although rises in deaths typically lag several weeks behind increases in new cases.

The health department calculates a positivity rate over a two-week period, and it increased by 0.3 percentage points on Saturday to reach 10.6 percent, state data shows. Saturday was the highest rate recorded since the state began reporting it on Oct. 15.

The rate is calculated using total “testing encounters,” which produces lower percentages because the figure includes people who received multiple tests at different points during the pandemic.

There were 679 additional cases reported in Clark County on Saturday, bringing the total number of cases to 82,363, according to the Southern Nevada Health District’s coronavirus website.

Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240. Follow @k_newberg on Twitter.