CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

CDC reports significant changes in COVID-19 levels in Boise area. What they mean to you

Idaho Statesman - 1/23/2023

The latest coronavirus update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that positive test results in the Treasure Valley dropped for the week ending on Wednesday.

It’s a welcome sign after case counts rose week after week in December. But Dr. David Pate, former CEO of the St. Luke’s Health System in Boise, says people concerned about COVID-19 still have good reasons to be wary.

The CDC’s COVID-19 community-level metrics, based mostly on hospitalization statistics, showed that Ada and Canyon counties were in the yellow zone, or medium-risk category, for the week ending Jan. 11. Now those counties are in the green zone, or low-risk category.

Apart from three counties still in the yellow – Payette, Washington and Adams — the remainder of the state is in the green zone. The CDC’s maps show the improvement.

The disease’s transmission rate fell too, to the moderate-transmission level in both counties, after multiple weeks rates in the riskier “substantial” level.

“The good news is that it does look like we’re continuing down a little bit from the trend where we were before,” Pate told the Idaho Statesman by phone on Friday, one day after CDC posted the latest data for Idaho. “The kind of post-holiday increases that we’ve come to expect with every holiday involving travel and family gatherings seem to be coming down, as we would expect.”

Pate said the percentage of positive test results for the entire state, now at 5.9%, does appear to be declining. The rate is highly uncertain, though, given the use of at-home tests and the number of people not reporting their illness to authorities. Public health officials say a rate of 5% or less is desirable.

“The things that do make me concerned are the low vaccination rates in Idaho and the low rate of those that have not gotten the bivalent vaccine, particularly those over the age of 50 and especially those over 65,” Pate said. “Those people going to be vulnerable.”

The updated booster vaccines are called bivalent because they protect against both the original virus that causes COVID-19 and the Omicron variants, according to the CDC. Previous boosters, which provide some protection against Omicron but not as much as the updated boosters, were called monovalent because they were designed only to protect against the original virus.

Pate noted that getting immunized for COVID-19 doesn’t guarantee a person won’t get infected. But it does help protect them from severe illness, hospitalization or even death from the virus.

“You still have to take other measures, besides getting vaccinated, to avoid getting infected,” he said.

In most cases, being infected with COVID-19 is not fatal and does not require hospitalization, Pate said. But data shows there’s a range of long-term complications that can arise, and it’s hard to tell who will get them and who won’t.

Even with a mild case, in a middle-aged, healthy person, those dangers can include increased risk of heart attacks, stroke, cognitive defects, chronic fatigue syndrome, abnormal lung functions and more. Pate recalled talking to a local cardiologist about a patient who had a “massive” pulmonary embolism as a result of the virus and died. The man was in his 40s.

‘Your risks go up with reinfections’

“The data is clear – it’s better to get infected as least often as possible,” he said. “Your risks really go up with reinfections. It’s almost like Russian roulette. The more times you pull that trigger, you are increasing the chance that the next one is going to contain the bullet.”

Not to mention, a new subvariant, called XBB.1.5, is on the rise and may have an increased ability to evade immunity.

Pate, who finds wastewater testing to be more reliable than case rates when determining how many people in a given area have COVID-19, said the new subvariant quickly showed up in Boise’s wastewater last month, as noted the latest report from Dec. 19. (Pate said wastewater data in Ada County is not up to date.)

XBB.1.5 is a combination of two Omicron variants. Reuters reported Friday that the subvariant now makes up nearly half of COVID-19 cases in the U.S.

“Based on what we know, we would probably be at risk for a new wave with this strain when it becomes predominant, and that could cause an increase in hospitalizations,” Pate said. “It doesn’t appear that we’re in that wave right now, but I think we have to be concerned that it may be coming.”

COVID-19 transmission rates moderate

Here’s what the latest CDC data shows in the Treasure Valley:

Case rates.With 234 people recorded as having COVID-19, Ada County’s rate of illness fell to 48.6 per 100,000 people. One month ago, during the third week of December, Ada County reported 438 people with COVID-19. Canyon County had 75 cases reported cases, and its rate fell to 32.6 per 100,000 people.

Hospital admissions.Ada County had an estimated 40 admissions, down from 48 one month ago, and Canyon County had 19, down from 23. Their combined admissions for the last week totaled 8.2 per 100,000 people.

Hospital beds filled. Staffed inpatient beds in use by confirmed COVID-19 patients in Ada and Canyon counties were 6.1%, down slightly from 6.4% the third week in December.

Community transmission.While more than a dozen counties around the state are in the two top categories for spread of the virus – the “high,” or red, category and the “substantial,” or orange, category – Ada, Canyon, Boise and Elmore counties are all in the yellow category, indicating a moderate level of transmission. Several counties in the state are in the “low,” or blue category.

©2023 The Idaho Statesman. Visit idahostatesman.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.