Idaho needs stay-home order to deal with surge in COVID cases, Harvard risk model says
A Harvard University-run analysis of coronavirus cases across the United States shows several Idaho counties — and by extension, the rest of the state — are in the highest-risk “red zone,” for which experts suggest returning to stay-home orders.
The Harvard Global Health Institute has partnered with various public health agencies and researchers to create its “COVID risk levels dashboard,” which calculates the number of coronavirus infections per 100,000 residents to determine the severity of COVID-19 outbreaks. U.S. counties are ranked on a color scale based on the number of cases per 100,000 residents: green for less than one case, which is considered “on track for containment”; yellow for one to nine cases, which is considered “community spread”; orange for 10 to 24 cases, which is “accelerated spread”; and red for 25 cases or more, which is considered the “tipping point.”
Public health experts have recommendations for each part of the scale to contain the virus. The recommendation for areas in the green zone is to continue testing and contact tracing. For the yellow zone, experts recommend rigorous testing and tracing, and for the orange zone they recommend rigorous testing and tracing, along with possible stay-home orders. For the red zone, stay-home orders are “necessary,” according to the researchers.
On Monday, seven of Idaho’s 44 counties were in the red zone: Ada, Canyon, Gem, Jerome, Kootenai, Owyhee and Payette. Nearly half of the state’s counties are in the yellow zone, and four counties still have no reported coronavirus infections. Still, the severity of the outbreaks in some counties has bumped the entire state of Idaho into the red zone by this model.
In the past seven days, Idaho has reported an average of 30.4 new cases per 100,000 people. Canyon County has the worst rate, at an average of 60.7 new cases per day. Owyhee County is next with 55.6 new cases daily, followed by Ada County at 51.9. The other red-zone counties have average daily cases of 37.6 (Payette County), 31 (Jerome County), 29.2 (Gem County) and 25.8 (Kootenai County).
Ashish Jha, a physician and the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, tweeted about the Idaho cases on Sunday. Jha said a lot of attention is going to outbreaks in places like Texas, Florida and Arizona.
“But one small state is experiencing a very bad situation, has gotten very little attention,” Jha wrote. “Idaho. Their case numbers are up 1366% since June 15.”
Jha also pointed to growing metrics in Idaho such as death and hospitalization rates.
“Very concerning rises in rural America which has far less hospital capacity, less ability to surge,” Jha wrote. “We have to help states like ID get this under control. For a while, some folks argued COVID was a disease of dense areas (i.e. cities). Turns out, it’s a disease of humanity.”
The purpose of the risk model is to offer guidance for decision-makers and community leaders to help suppress coronavirus in their areas, according to the experts’ framework. However, Idaho leaders have shown no indication that the state will return to a stay-home order. Idaho has failed to exit Stage 4 of its reopening plan twice (and Ada County last month was moved back to Stage 3 by the local health district amid a rash of new cases), and Statesman data show the state could fail once again to emerge from the final stage on Friday, the last day of the current two-week period.
Gov. Brad Little has declined to issue a statewide mandate for coronavirus preventive measures, including face coverings. Instead, Little has left those decisions to local entities, including the state’s seven health districts. At the district level, those decisions fall to health boards made up largely of member-county commissioners, some of whom have shared misinformation or expressed skepticism about the pandemic. So far, only Boise-based Central District Health has issued a mask mandate, which went into effect for Ada County last week.
This story was originally published July 21, 2020 at 7:00 AM.
