The number of new positive cases of COVID-19 continues to rise in Garland County, causing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to deem the county a "high risk" zone on Thursday evening.
Garland County Health Officer Dr. Gene Shelby said cases are trending much the same as last summer, in which numbers began their greatest ascent in mid to late July. He said Friday morning he was not surprised to see the county enter the high-risk designation.
"Looking at some trends from last summer, we're on the same upward trajectory that we were then," he said. "I would be surprised if the hospitalizations reach the levels that we had last summer just because the omicron subvariant is the predominant strain that's affecting people and it just doesn't cause the severity of disease, but it's still enough that people who have it are sick enough to at least need to be hospitalized. You know, I think the really important thing is for people to understand that this has not gone away. It's still here and it's still affecting people."
In his weekly report Monday, he reported 213 new cases for the week ending July 10, compared to last week's 137 new case count and the prior week's 150. He noted an increase of 61 active cases this week for a total of 325. He said for a lot of people, the omicron variant will cause a very mild disease, but for a significant percentage, they will be sick enough to be hospitalized.
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Another concern, he said, is long COVID, or those who experience long-term effects from their infection.
"It's predicted that we'll have some more deaths this summer," he said. "And then the other thing is that the severity of the long COVID -- it's not as bad as the people that have to be in the ICUs and on ventilators, necessarily, but it's something that will continue to affect people for -- it's unknown, years, potentially. So it's still a bad infection that's still very much in our community."
He said people need to pay attention to who they are around or they will likely catch the virus. Last summer, he noted, the Fourth of July was the turning point.
"And it's the same numbers, really, this year," he said. "We saw gradual increases in June and some of the increases were more this year than last year, and then we've seen that continuing on in July. Now last year, getting into mid and late July, is when it really took off as the number of active cases went from about 200 to 300, but didn't really peak until mid-August when we had almost 1,000 active cases in the county. Hopefully, we won't see a repeat of that, but there's no reason to think that that's not a possibility."
In comparing the two years over the last few months, he said it is "amazing" how the numbers mirror one another, noting the county actually has a slightly higher number of cases this July than last.
"Of course, there's lots of differences between this year and last year," he said. "One, obviously, we've had a lot more people vaccinated. But also we had fewer people wearing masks and taking the precautions to prevent getting an infection. And then the big difference is that last summer we had the delta variant, so we had a lot of people sick and in the hospital and on ventilators and dying."
Another difference this year is the ready availability of home testing kits, he said, which skews the official numbers.
"We know that there's a lot more people that have contracted COVID than they're actually counting in the health department's numbers because people are home testing and then they're not reporting it," he said.
"And the numbers that we do have that come from testing that (come from) health care facilities, or the health department, or hospitals or physician offices, are people that have gone to seek some medical care, so they have at least (had) some mild symptoms. There are differences but there's still areas of real concern."
While the variants of the virus can change at any point, he said there is no way to predict it. As COVID-19 has shown a great ability to change and switch, there is little reason to expect it will not continue to evolve, he said.
"At the same time, with what we've seen over the last month, our hospitalization rates really go up significantly. A month ago, there were no COVID patients in either of the hospitals in Hot Springs and now we've got 15 patients in the two hospitals combined," he said.
Although the patients are not as ill as they were a year ago, he said simply going from zero to 15 is significant. Of the 15 hospitalized at either CHI St. Vincent or National Park Medical Center, three are in the intensive care unit but none are on ventilators.
Shelby still recommends wearing masks in certain situations, noting, "Anytime that I'm going to be around people that I don't know -- again, it depends on how close you are and the length of time -- but I always wear a mask when I go to a grocery store or go to Walmart or something like that. Or go to a movie."
He said there are "a lot of places where you're going to be enclosed with people you don't know. You don't know if they might have it active in a section and that they might not know it or they might not be taking it seriously. But I haven't had COVID and I don't want it."
Shelby said people need to be aware COVID is still here and to be careful "because you don't want it. You might not get very sick but you might get real sick. So anything to prevent that is important."