WUPHD reports high COVID-19 levels

By ZACHARY MARANO

zmarano@yourdailyglobe.com

HANCOCK — When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated their way of monitoring COVID-19 community levels on Feb. 25 to be determined by the number of new COVID-19 admissions and staffed inpatient beds, the five counties in the western Upper Peninsula went from a high risk of transmission to low community levels.

Because of these changes, the western U.P. was suddenly considered low risk for COVID-19 by the CDC for the first time in months. This may have been short lived, however, as an update from the Western Upper Peninsula Health Department on Thursday shows that all five counties have medium or high levels again.

“Numbers are beginning to look like they did in the early days of the pandemic with zero new cases in Ontonagon and Keweenaw counties, and less than 10 each in Baraga and Gogebic counties. While those things are positive, there were still two deaths in the last week,” the update says.

According to the update, Baraga, Houghton and Keweenaw counties have medium community levels, and Gogebic and Ontonagon counties have high community levels, for a medium community level for the western U.P. as a whole. There were seven new COVID-19 cases in Baraga, six new cases in Gogebic and 16 new cases in Houghton as well as one death each in Gogebic and Ontonagon, for a total of 14,455 cases and 260 deaths in the five counties since the beginning of the pandemic two years ago.

The CDC says that people should stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccines and get tested if they have symptoms regardless of community levels. If the community level is medium or high, people who are at high risk for severe illness should talk to their health care provider about whether they need to wear a mask and take other precautions. In communities where the level is high, the CDC says to wear a well-fitting mask indoors in public.

For the community levels to be determined low by the CDC again, the counties must have fewer than 200 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people in the past seven days, as well as a seven-day total of less than 10 new COVID-19 admissions per 100,000 population and a seven-day average of less than 10% of staffed inpatient beds occupied by COVID-19 patients.

The health department’s update shows that the percent of all ages with the initial vaccine are 51.4% in Baraga County, 59.4% in Gogebic, 56.1% in Houghton, 63.5% in Keweenaw and 66.7% in Ontonagon, for a total of 57.4% in the western U.P. According to the COVID-19 vaccine dashboard on michigan.gov, as of Monday, 66.4% of all Michigan residents have received one or more doses of the vaccine.

According to the Iron County Health Department’s COVID-19 update on Wednesday, there has been one confirmed COVID-19 case and two probable cases in Iron County, Wisconsin, since March 3, for a total of 1,461 cases and 47 deaths in the county through the pandemic.

The update says that 66% of the total population in Iron County have received one dose of the vaccine, 62.9% have completed the series and 36.1% have been boosted. The Wisconsin COVID-19 vaccine tracker was updated on Thursday to show that 71.8% of people in Wisconsin are vaccinated with at least one dose and 65.3% are fully vaccinated.