COVID cases in Navajo County are dwindling – but rates in Apache County are still high Navajo County

The tide of new COVID-19 cases in Navajo County has slowed to a trickle, and health officials have opened vaccination appointments for everyone over 55, Health Director Janelle Linn told the board of directors on Tuesday.

“We only had eight new cases in the last 24 hours, which is very encouraging and new to us. We are excited to see that,” said Linn.

“It’s just fantastic that COVID-19 cases are occurring,” said Supervisor Daryl Seymore.

Still, the county has recorded 15,765 confirmed cases, including 577 cases among students and school staff. Nationwide, the death toll has reached 505, Linn said.

For the past week, Navajo County reported an infection rate of 15 per 100,000 – just below the national average of 18 per 100,000. Apache County has twice the infection rate – 40 per 100,000, which is still among the highest rates in the state.

The hundreds of cases reported at the Navajo County locations have raised concerns among teachers and parents. The governor last week ordered schools to resume face-to-face classes next week, despite continued reports of new cases in schools.

However, Navajo County has now offered vaccinations to all teachers who want them. As a result, vaccinated teachers do not need to be quarantined if exposed to the virus by a student or colleague.

This greatly reduces the problem of finding replacement teachers for quarantine teachers.

Children seem much less likely to develop serious symptoms and do not seem to pass the virus on as easily as adults.

Both Navajo and Apache counties are at “very high risk” in national COVID tracking databases despite the steady decline in new cases since the peak in mid-January.

In Navajo County, new cases are down 47% and hospital admissions are down 58% in the past two weeks. Still, the county has reported 27 deaths during that time, with 6% of the tests returning positive.

Apache County’s incidence is only 9% lower and hospital admissions down 64% – with a total of 29 deaths in the past two weeks.

Linn urged residents to continue to wear masks in public or indoor spaces where they cannot stand 6 feet apart.

She noted that the governor’s capacity constraints on businesses such as gyms and bars continue to require businesses to wear social distancing and masks to protect customers and employees.

About 82% of hospital beds in the region are still full – but only about 11% due to COVID. “That’s still a little worrying,” Linn said, giving another reason to urge people to keep wearing masks in public.

Nevertheless, the briefing was mainly good news for a district that at times had the highest infection and death rates in the country.

The best news relates to the continued progress of the mass vaccination program, including receiving the first doses of a third highly potent vaccine – that from Janssen, Johnson and Johnson.

Navajo County has received between 2,000 and 2,500 doses of vaccine from the state each week. According to Linn, 14% of the county’s population is now fully vaccinated, compared to just 9.2% of the state’s population.

The state continues to vaccinate 1-2% of the population every week as the national rollout speeds up. A national vaccine tracking database showed that earlier this week, Arizona gave 20% of the population a first shot and fully vaccinated 10% – one of the better performances in the country.

Alaska does the best: 25% received a dose and 16% are fully vaccinated.

Nationwide, around 2.2 million people are shot every day, compared to around 1 million a day on January 21.

Many residents also now enjoy partial immunity after receiving their first shot or recovering from an infection.

About 14% of residents have recovered from infection and about 20% have received at least one dose of the vaccine. As a result, around 35% of the population is now at least partially protected from infection, which could help explain the dramatic decline in new cases since the peak in January.

Linn offered the board information on both the confusing change in state policy on business operations and the new Johnson and Johnson vaccine.

She said the governor’s order to lift capacity restrictions on restaurants, gyms, theaters, and other businesses that provide fertile ground for the virus to spread when crowded.

Although the order removed the previous capacity limits, the company still has to ensure that customers can maintain social distance.

“In order to maintain this distance of two meters, you really can’t climb a lot when you’re occupied. It doesn’t mean that everything is gone and you can just go back to normal, ”Linn said. “Where that can have a bigger impact are things like sporting events.”

She noted that cities, counties and cities can still issue mask mandates for public spaces even though the state has not issued such a mandate.

However, a bill currently going through legislature would give companies the power to ignore local mask mandates.

She said the county has also been bombarded with questions about Johnson and Johnson’s new one-shot vaccine as people try to understand clinical trial efficacy data.

She noted that the Federal Disease Control Centers advised that Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer and Moderna vaccines all offer equivalent protection and that people should take the chance to get the vaccine vaccinated first is available.

“There has been some confusion about the rates of effectiveness. Moderna and Pfizer vaccines account for 90 to 94% and Janssen’s for 66 to 74% – that has created confusion.

“We want to emphasize that the experiments were carried out differently, the groups were different, the parts of the world were different. So you really can’t compare them directly. “

The bottom line is that Johnson and Johnson’s vaccine was 94% effective in avoiding hospital stays and 100% effective in avoiding death. It might prove a little less effective than the other two in preventing mild infections.

However, the Johnson and Johnson vaccine has some advantages as well. It requires a single dose, which cuts the logistics of the mass vaccination campaign in half.

It could also have fewer side effects and possibly even work better against some of the new, more infectious variants of the virus. However, this has not yet been confirmed in large-scale studies.

According to Linn, the CDC has also updated its recommendations on when people who have been fully vaccinated for at least two weeks can resume something that is nearing normal life.

“Basically, they let us know that fully vaccinated people may be a little less careful when congregating indoors. If a large proportion of the people in the room are fully vaccinated, you still want to distance yourself socially – but not necessarily wear your mask.

“This is very helpful for family celebrations. You may be able to chat with your neighbor next door without a mask if you keep social distance. “

She noted that people who were fully vaccinated no longer need to be quarantined if they are in close contact with an infected person.

On the other hand, “some things haven’t changed. When we are in a large public meeting, we should still wear our mask. Approach any large gatherings of unvaccinated people with caution. “

Public health officials are still looking for conclusive answers to many questions about the virus and vaccines.

For example, doctors don’t know if someone vaccinated and protected from developing symptoms still can’t have an undetected infection to pass on to others.

Doctors also don’t know whether the vaccine will provide lasting protection. People may need a booster shot in six months or a year, especially given the spread of the new, more infections, and potentially more dangerous strains of the COVID-19 virus.

“There are so many unknowns about COVID that we are constantly monitoring. We all want to know when we can get back to our daily routine, back to normal, ”she said.

That’s why Linn and the CDC are urging people to continue practicing social distancing and wearing masks in public until 70% or 80% of the population has either got a shot or has recovered from an infection – which should happen sometime this summer .

Peter Aleshire covers county government and other issues for the Independent. He is the former editor of the Payson Roundup. Reach out to him at [email protected]