After five weeks of increasing COVID-19 activity in the state, the data is starting to trend in the right direction and health leaders say Idaho hit a peak in the current surge of COVID-19 cases.
The Department of Health and Welfare reports the state’s COVID-19 testing positivity rate has declined from 39% to 34%. Director Dave Jeppesen says while this is a good sign, testing positivity is still seven times higher than the goal of 5%.
A recording of today's media briefing on COVID-19 is now available: https://t.co/KVdcgt6i2K (Recordings of previous briefings are available at https://t.co/N3bjJL8DB5, under the Vaccine tab.)
— DHW (@IDHW) February 8, 2022
“Yes, we have hit our peak. We were watching the trends to make sure we had hit our peak and right around the third or fourth week of January is when we hit our peak case counts and we are starting to come back down which aligns exactly with our percent positivity trend,” Deputy State Epidemiologist Kathryn Turner said.
Although state health leaders are seeing positive trends in the data, new positive cases and the number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 is still very high across the state.
Crisis Standards of Care remains in effect across southern Idaho due to staffing shortages and low bloody supply.
Health leaders are continuing to encourage the public to protect themselves against the elevated level of virus activity in the state by getting a vaccine and wearing a proper mask and getting vaccinated.
According to @IDHW, the state’s testing positivity rate has dropped from 39% to 34%.
— Nicole Camarda (@CamardaNicole) February 8, 2022
While this is a good sign, Dave Jeppesen says it’s 7x higher than the goal. IDHW is encouraging people to start wearing proper masks. #idahocovid19 pic.twitter.com/v2xIap7ugT
“We still have a lot of disease circulating the state. There are still people getting omicron and getting hospitalized and deaths that we are having reported to us every day,” State Epidemiologist Christine Hahn said. “We want people to be aware that it’s still a risk out there and that this virus, even though we know that it is not as severe as delta and some of the other previous variants, it still can cause severe illness.”
The number of people getting vaccinated each day in Idaho is declining, right now only about 2,4000 vaccinations are being reported per day and about half of them are booster doses.
Idaho currently ranks 42nd in the nation according to the CDC for vaccination rates against COVID-19 among adults.
