Idaho adds more than 1,900 COVID-19 cases, over 50 deaths Thursday as surge continues
Idaho added more than 1,900 COVID-19 cases Thursday and 53 deaths, signs the state’s ongoing surge is nowhere near slowing down.
There are so many new cases that state public health districts are having trouble keeping up. According to the Department of Health and Welfare’s COVID-19 dashboard, there are approximately 11,200 “outstanding positive laboratory results” that have yet to be fully processed into the system.
According to a spokesperson for the agency, Niki Forbing-Orr, health officials simply have been unable to process the high volume quickly.
With a major supplier of oxygen in Idaho asking hospital customers to conserve, there were 781 patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 at Idaho health care centers as of Monday, and 192 patients in intensive care units, according to data from Health and Welfare.
Idaho doctors also are concerned about cases among pregnant women, which in some instances are causing stillbirths, maternal deaths and large numbers of infants needing to enter neonatal intensive care units.
The state’s death toll during the pandemic now stands at 2,907. With the state closing in on 3,000, health officials are predicting that hospitalizations and deaths won’t peak until the month of November.
Nine of the deaths added Thursday were in Canyon County and eight were in Ada, and those two counties also accounted for a lion’s share of the new caseload, with Ada adding 651 and Canyon 315. One of the new deaths became the first recorded COVID-related death during the pandemic in Camas County.
Despite a slowdown in processing cases, the state’s seven-day moving average of new cases rose to 1,318 on Thursday. The state’s test positivity rate, which measures the percentage of tests taken that come back positive, fell slightly, to 15.4%, for the week of Sept. 19-25. The rate remains significantly higher than the 5% threshold that many health experts use to determine whether viral spread is out of control in a community.
Since the start of the pandemic, there have been 11,203 COVID-19 hospitalizations, 1,863 intensive care unit admissions and 11,901 health care workers infected, according to state data. There have been 124,465 estimated recoveries and a total of 257,321 cases.
This story was originally published September 30, 2021 at 7:45 PM.
