Southeastern Idaho Public Health Director Maggie Mann is grateful that the region, state and nation are all getting a breather from the ravages of COVID-19.
Whether the current breather represents the calm before yet another storm or the fizzling of a seemingly never-ending pandemic remains to be seen.
During a presentation Thursday to the Pocatello Rotary Club, Mann showed the crowd a color-coded map, depicting the vast majority of the country in green — representing minimal COVID-19 risk — with only a few isolated pockets of yellow and red, where the risk is elevated.
“The good news is right now trends are encouraging globally, nationally, at a state level and at a local level,” Mann said. “The country is almost all green for low risk. If I would have shared this map with you two months ago it would have been a different story.”
Data from the World Health Organization shows there were 5.59 million cases reported worldwide for the week of April 11-17, down 24 percent from the prior week. Global coronavirus deaths, at 18,215, were down by 12 percent for the same period compared with the prior week.
“All regions of the world are reporting decreasing trends in new cases and deaths,” Mann said.
Throughout the pandemic, there have been more than 500 million global cases and 6 million deaths.
“That’s a scenario over two years ago as we were embarking on this path we really hoped to avoid, and we thought that we could, but unfortunately the virus had different plans,” Mann said.
After the initial COVID-19 wave and another wave caused by the delta variant, the world experienced its steepest spike in cases and deaths by far with the arrival of the highly contagious omicron variant during the winter.
“That was a very intense spike in cases and impact to our hospitals. It’s easily double, close to triple the cases we saw in the original peak and the delta peak,” Mann said. “What we are very grateful for is it dropped off almost as quickly as it spiked.”
Will the reprieve continue?
Some new and troubling sub-variants have emerged. A sub-variant known as “stealth omicron” and several of its iterations are now responsible for more than 90 percent of cases in the country, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control.
Nationally, there were 62,052 new cases for the week of April 20 — still basement level compared with the peak of the omicron spike but the highest number since the week of March 7, when there were 63,052 cases.
In the eight counties within the Southeastern Idaho Public Health District, there were 62 cases for the week of April 17 and 60 cases for the week of April 10. They’re still insignificant compared with the peak of the omicron spike, when there were 1,529 cases for the week of Jan. 16. The numbers are up, however, from the nine cases reported within the district for the week of April 3.
At the local level, Mann explained numbers can be skewed by laboratories and providers reporting large batches of cases at one time. Mann also noted that most variants don’t wreak the kind of havoc caused by the delta and omicron variants. Is another wave coming? Will seasonal upticks in COVID-19 become the norm?
“We have really no way to predict at this point in time. We’re hopeful this decrease is a long-term decrease, but we don’t know,” Mann said.
Mann believes it would be unwise not to be prepared for another wave, however. She said the data supports getting children ages 5 to 11 vaccinated, and the current recommendation is for adults ages 50 and over to get a second booster shot if it’s been at least four months since their first COVID-19 vaccine booster shot.
Idaho has a lot of room for improvement regarding its vaccination rate. Mann said only half of Southeast Idaho residents ages 5 and older are fully vaccinated. She said it would take a vaccination rate of 85 percent to 95 percent to effectively suppress transmission.
“I certainly would be more comfortable if we had a higher percentage of our population vaccinated, but we don’t,” she said.
Though the vaccine was developed for the initial coronavirus variant, Mann said people who are vaccinated are still 11 times less likely to be infected. And the reduction in hospitalizations and deaths among the vaccinated population is far more dramatic.
Mann has seen strong local evidence to support the effectiveness of getting vaccinated and wearing face masks to reduce transmission. She explained that Blaine County was the hardest hit area of the state at the start of the pandemic. By adopting strong preventative measures, and later by having the state’s highest population of vaccinated individuals, Mann said Blaine County brought its cases down significantly. Mann attributes a recent increase in the county’s positive COVID-19 tests by percentage to the vaccine losing efficacy over time among the Blaine County population.
Mann is also intrigued by local and state influenza rates, which have been extremely low for the past two years. She attributes declines in the flu to precautions in place to limit the spread of COVID-19.
Finally, she showed a slide depicting COVID-19 cases in Power County. A green line on the graph marked the beginning of a precipitous decline in new cases.
Mann explained on that day, the Power County Commission enacted a requirement to wear a face covering in public buildings.
“They saw cases in the county really accelerating and they did a good job of explaining it to the community and the rationale behind it, and it resulted in a drop-off in cases,” Mann said.