Ada County a ‘rapid riser’ for COVID, hitting highest level of COVID impact Thursday

Ada County spent just one week at the “moderate” community level before hitting the federal threshold for the highest level of COVID-19 concern on Thursday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uses one set of data to determine how much the coronavirus is spreading in a community — and another set to determine how much that spread is causing severe disease and threatening access to health care.

Ada County and most of the rest of Idaho have been locked at high transmission rates for weeks. But even with rising cases and more COVID-19 tests coming back positive, few people were in the hospital with the virus.

That changed this week.

Ada, Elmore, Valley and Lewis counties are now in the “high” community level. Those counties this week had more than 200 new cases and more than 10 new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 residents in their hospital service areas.

The first three of those counties are in the Central District Health region.

The public health department’s public information officer, Rachel Garceau, said that CDH wants “to remind community members that, especially going into a holiday weekend, it is prudent to consider the level of risk they might be taking in the community.”

Outdoors gatherings are generally safer than indoor gatherings, when it comes to the spread of respiratory viruses.

“We encourage the use of at-home testing to screen yourself before you participate in community activities and gatherings,” Heidi Hopkins, communicable disease control program manager at CDH, said in an emailed statement. “We would also remind people that the COVID-19 vaccine is readily available for anyone age 5 and older, and community members are encouraged to seek testing and early treatment if they present with COVID symptoms.”

Ada and Canyon counties also are among the areas where coronavirus is spreading most aggressively. They were classified as “rapid riser counties” by the CDC in its daily report for Thursday.

Idaho hospitals this week have reported more than 100 people hospitalized with COVID-19, with more than 20 people newly admitted to the hospital on some days.

Still, the health care situation is far less tenuous than it was last fall, when the delta variant burned through Idaho’s under-vaccinated population and pushed hospitals beyond their limits.

About 5% of Idaho’s hospital patients have COVID-19 this week, and only about 2% to 3% of ICU patients have COVID-19 — compared with prior peaks of more than 30% of all hospitalizations and more than 60% of ICU patients.

Last fall and winter, Idaho also eclipsed 100 new admissions per day, with many days when Idaho reported 600 to 800 total coronavirus hospitalizations.

Here are the CDC’s recommendations for people who live in areas with a high community level:

• Wear a mask indoors in public, regardless of vaccination status.
• Stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccines.
• Get tested if you have symptoms.
• People at high risk for severe illness should consider additional precautions.