‘At our peak’: Idaho COVID positivity rate from omicron falls, but is health crisis over?
For the first time in six weeks, Idaho’s COVID-19 percent positivity rate fell, an indication that the state might have passed the infectious peak of its omicron wave.
After rising every week since the week of Dec. 12, to a record high of 39% for the week of Jan. 16, the positivity rate fell to 34% the week of Jan. 23, the most recent data available. The state’s positivity rate is delayed a week and updated on Thursdays.
Though the rate is still very high, the new data could indicate that cases are beginning to decline in Idaho.
“I think we can say that we’re at our peak,” Dr. Kathryn Turner, deputy state epidemiologist, told the Idaho Statesman on Thursday. “I think we’re going to start seeing what other states are seeing, with case counts going down.”
After colossal climbs in case rates hit many U.S. states in December and January, regions that experienced omicron surges prior to Idaho saw new infections drop off quickly after a few weeks.
Idaho could be on a similar track, but the most dire impacts of the omicron wave on the state may be yet to come.
Hospitalizations and deaths tend to lag spikes in new infections, since it takes time for newly infected people to get seriously ill and require care.
“Typically the lag is about two weeks to four weeks after the transmissibility peak,” Dr. Ted Epperly, president and CEO of the Family Medicine Residency of Idaho, previously told the Statesman.
If the week of Jan. 23 was Idaho’s peak, residents should expect to see the major impact on hospitalizations in about a week, the impact on intensive care units and ventilators in about three weeks, and the impact on deaths in about five weeks, Epperly said.
“It’s a pretty long trail that it leaves, and even though it’s less virulent, the increased numbers ... will help it find the most vulnerable,” he said. “At its peak, it will leave in its wake a (larger) impact than did delta on hospitalizations and on death.”
The delta variant caused the wave of cases last fall that forced the state to activate crisis standards of care for the first time in its history, allowing hospitals to ration care if necessary. Much of Southern Idaho had crisis standards of care reactivated last month, with hospitalizations rising and many health care workers out sick with COVID-19.
The director of the Department of Health and Welfare, Dave Jeppesen, has said that the rest of the state could follow in crisis standards if trends continue.
As of Jan. 30, there were 614 patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 at Idaho hospitals, and 104 COVID-19 patients in intensive care. On Dec. 24, there were 225 hospitalized patients and 70 in intensive care.
This story was originally published February 3, 2022 at 6:12 PM.
