Coronavirus in Idaho: Positivity rate continues to drop, but some have ‘long COVID’
Idaho’s statewide COVID-19 test positivity rate fell for the eighth straight week, marking the further decline of Idaho’s omicron wave.
The week of March 13, the state’s test positivity rate was 1.5%, the lowest rate seen during the pandemic. Public health experts aim for a rate that is less than 5% to indicate control of a respiratory pandemic.
After the positivity rate peaked in mid-January at 37.9%, the decline has been steep.
Though cases have fallen rapidly in recent weeks, omicron continues to be the dominant strain in the state. Since the week of Feb. 16, 100% of variant specimens sequenced by Health and Welfare have been omicron, according to the state dashboard. Over the previous month, more than 99% were omicron, and the rest were delta.
In Central District Health, the public health district that includes Ada County, the positivity rate was even lower the week of March 13, at 1.2%.
During the omicron surge, local public health districts were inundated with cases, and for weeks a backlog of tens of thousands of cases affected parts of the state’s data dashboard. A message on the state’s dashboard, visible on Thursday, states that the local health districts have “processed nearly all pending positive laboratory reports” that date from the surge in late December and January.
As of Friday, every county in Idaho except for Benewah County is at a “low” COVID-19 community level, according to Health and Welfare. Benewah is at “medium.” Under the recently updated community level standards created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. counties are assessed based on the number of new per capita cases as well as the number of new COVID-19 admissions to hospitals and the percentage of staffed inpatient hospital beds occupied by COVID patients.
Regardless of the COVID-19 levels in a community, the CDC recommends that residents stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccinations, improve indoor ventilation, and follow CDC recommendations for isolation and quarantine if there is a known exposure.
Since March 18, Health and Welfare has recorded 1,611 new cases and 33 deaths. Since the start of the pandemic, there have been a total of 443,549 cases and 4,867 deaths.
‘Long Covid’
Despite the declines in case numbers, some Idahoans are suffering from a condition known as “long COVID,” when symptoms last for an extended period of time.
The symptoms can vary widely and can be experienced four or more weeks after first being infected, according to a Tuesday blog post by Dr. Christine Hahn, Idaho’s state epidemiologist.
The most common symptoms are fatigue, muscle aches, shortness of breath and mental acuity woes, Hahn wrote. But a longer list of symptoms also includes chest or stomach pain, headaches, rashes, dizziness, mood changes and other symptoms.
Those symptoms may resolve after 6-8 weeks or may last “for many months,” Hahn said. Treatments vary based on symptoms.
Though vaccinated, boosted and unvaccinated people have been known to get long COVID-19 symptoms, Hahn said studies show “that vaccination decreases the risk of developing long COVID, even if the vaccinated person does get a COVID infection.”
“Getting vaccinated and boosted against COVID-19 is the best way to prevent getting COVID-19 and can also help protect those around you,” Hahn said.
Long-term care
At long-term care facilities, 129 new cases have been recorded in the past week.
As of Friday, Health and Welfare reports there are 8,356 active coronavirus cases among 134 long-term care facilities. There are 228 facilities with resolved outbreaks.
To date, 1,101 people from 230 facilities in Idaho have died from COVID-19-related causes — two more than were reported last Friday. Long-term care deaths account for about 23% of the 4,867 in the state.
Weekly snapshot
Vaccine doses administered in Idaho: 2,310,548, according to Health and Welfare. Of those, 929,667 people have been fully vaccinated, which accounts for 54.3% of Idahoans age 5 and older.
Test positivity rate: Out of the 17,994 COVID-19 tests conducted for the week of March 13 - March 19, 1.5% came back positive.
This story was originally published March 25, 2022 at 6:49 PM.
