Idaho moves to Stage 3 of reopening without meeting its own COVID-19 benchmarks

Idaho Gov. Brad Little on Tuesday moved Idaho into Stage 3 of the COVID-19 reopening plan even though Idaho has not met two of its own key parameters required for advancing.

While it’s true Idaho’s COVID-19 case numbers are dropping precipitously and have been dropping since the state came perilously close to crisis standards of care in November, Idaho still isn’t meeting lower standards for hospital admissions and intensive care unit admissions to advance to the more relaxed standards associated with Stage 3.

Just to be clear, the state isn’t specific about what the criteria are for each stage. The criteria for such things as overall daily cases, positivity rates, ventilator and equipment supply, hospitalizations and ICU admissions are general criteria without regard to a specific stage. “All criteria below must be met before Idaho advances to the next stage of reopening,” according to the state’s website.

Hospital admissions of suspected and confirmed COVID-19 cases are supposed to be less than eight per day on average over the prior 14-day period, according to the state’s criteria.

But the most recent report from the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare shows Idaho’s daily hospital admissions in the 20-40 range every day for the period from Jan. 12-25, with no single day dropping below 20 hospital admissions per day, still more than twice the target.

Further, intensive care unit admissions of confirmed COVID-19 patients is supposed to be fewer than 25 per day on average over the prior 14-day period in order to advance.

But on that same Jan. 12-25 report, the total number of patients hospitalized in the ICU was well above the target of 25 each of the prior 14 days. The number of ICU patients ranged from 60-90 per day, more than double the required target.

Granted, cases overall in Idaho have been dropping, as have positivity rates. The daily number of cases has been consistently below 500 since Jan. 21, and Idaho’s positivity rate for Jan. 17-23 was around 8%. Idaho’s COVID-19 death rate has slowed, as well. While Idaho was seeing 100 deaths every six days in December, that rate slowed to 100 deaths every 12 days by the end of January.

“Today, thanks to you, those case numbers are much lower and trending downward,” Little said Tuesday. “Idaho now has one of the lowest case rates and spread in the nation.”

However, we’re not out of the woods yet, and now is not the time to let our guard down, just when things are improving.

Dr. Christine Hahn, state epidemiologist, said Tuesday that the new variant is likely already in Idaho, even though it hasn’t been detected in a lab yet.

Further, Idaho’s rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine has gotten off to a rocky start, with only about 5% of the population having received even one dose of the vaccine.

Putting Idaho into Stage 3 and relaxing crowd size limits sends the wrong message that it’s OK to let our guard down.

Moving from stage to stage is arbitrary anyway, especially when the state’s own criteria for advancing aren’t even being met.

With so many exemptions to crowd size limits and no enforcement of measures, Gov. Little would have been better off keeping Idaho in Stage 2, keeping the positive momentum going and at least making an attempt at achieving the state’s goals for hospitalizations and ICU admissions.

This story was originally published February 3, 2021 at 4:00 AM.