Nevada adds 855 new COVID-19 cases as positivity rate increases

Nevada on Tuesday reported 855 new coronavirus cases and one additional death as the state’s test positivity rate climbed back into double digits for the first time in nearly five months.

Updated figures posted by the Department of Health and Human Services on the state’s coronavirus website brought totals in Nevada to 340,600 cases and 5,731 deaths.

The new cases remained higher than the 14-day moving average of daily reported cases, which increased slightly to 468 on Tuesday, state data shows. The two-week moving average of new cases has been climbing since it reached a low of 132 on June 5, matching a recent rise in two of the the state’s other major disease metrics — test positivity rate and hospitalizations.

The surge, which has largely been driven by spread of the disease in Southern Nevada, has led the Biden administration to designate Clark County as a “sustained hotspot,” indicating it has “a high sustained case burden and may be higher risk for experiencing health-care resource limitations.”

Data guide: COVID-19’s impact on Nevada

The state’s two-week test positivity rate, which essentially tracks the percentage of people tested for COVID-19 who are found to be infected, increased by 0.5 percentage points on Tuesday, reaching 10 percent.

It was the first time since mid-February that the state’s test positivity rate was at or above 10 percent, according to state data. The metric has been rising steadily in recent weeks since bottoming out at 3.3 percent on June 9.

There were 757 people in Nevada hospitalized with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 cases as of Tuesday’s report, which is 67 more than the day prior. It was the highest number of people hospitalized in Nevada since there were 773 reported on Feb. 16, according to the data.

Only deaths from COVID-19 have remained flat in recent weeks.

The lone fatality reported Tuesday was below the moving two-week average of two deaths per day, the data shows.

State and county health agencies also often redistribute the daily data after it is reported to better reflect the date of death or a test or onset of symptoms, which is why the moving-average trend lines frequently differ from daily reports and are considered better indicators of the direction of the outbreak.

In Clark County, there were 762 new coronavirus cases reported on Tuesday, according to data from the Southern Nevada Health District. The only death recorded in the state on Tuesday occurred in the county.

Totals for Clark County rose to 266,224 cases and 4,539 deaths since the start of the pandemic. The county’s two-week positivity rate climbed by 0.6 percentage points, reaching 11.3 percent, according to state data.

This article has been updated to correctly attribute the “sustained hotspot” designation.

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