COVID-19 cases increase in Southern Indiana
Aug. 23—SOUTHERN INDIANA — Southern Indiana health officials say there has been a recent increase in COVID-19 cases.
Clark County Health Officer Dr. Eric Yazel said there has been an uptick in the past month, but the severity seems to be "relatively mild."
"We've had COVID enough now that we can actually see the season patterns with it, and we do seem to see a spike this time of year every year," he said. "We start seeing an upswing after the Fourth of July, and then, inconveniently, it always seems to take off right about the time we go back to school with some changes and things."
Yazel said the Clark County Health Department is still closely monitoring the COVID-19 situation, but he emphasizes that the situation is much different than a few years ago, and hospitalizations are staying in the single digits.
"We're seeing absences and things like that, which obviously is fortunate and a change from back in 2020," he said. "As time goes on, severity seems to be relatively mild, but we have to watch because there's always potential for some new variant that hits harder to come through."
Yazel notes that the current COVID strain is a subvariant of Omicron.
"They're starting to develop vaccines specific to that, which you'll see come out in the next month or so," he said. "In fact, I was working with some organizations determining how many to order and what that looks like and things like that."
Although COVID-19 immunizations have been slow recently, he expects to see an increase in the fall as people get both their flu shots and COVID-19 shots.
"As the winter time comes in, we certainly encourage anybody who's high risk [with] comorbidities or around high-risk people to do it as soon as possible and not wait for more severity or anything like that," he said.
Floyd County Health Officer Dr. Tom Harris said although the community is seeing more cases recently, "a lot of the really vulnerable groups have been fairly well-vaccinated."
"We haven't really had a big spike," he said. "One nursing home has had some cases. One nursing home has had I believe 11 cases, but that's been the biggest local cluster so far."
Harris said as he worked in the emergency room at Baptist Health Floyd this week, there was a COVID-19 case, but overall, "it's not been a major deal yet."
Although COVID-19 data is still tracked, it is not at the same level as a few years ago.
"We really have gotten to the point where we monitor more when we hear a lot of absences from a single facility, and we track our hospitalizations very closely," Yazel said. "The rest of it tends to be more like a flu-like illness that we pay attention to from an absenteeism side of things, but as far a monitoring day in and day out, there's just not nearly the data available."
Compared to the severity in the early days of COVID-19, Yazel said that "it's hard to believe this is a descendant of that same virus."
"[In 2020], people came in absolutely critically ill, and now it's more of sniffles and a runny nose, which is kind of surreal compared to what we used to see," he said.
Yazel reminds those who test positive for COVID to stay home while they are sick. People should also remember basic hygiene such as frequent handwashing and covering their mouth when they cough.
"The basic hygiene things that we've been stressing all along are absolutely still the most important things in preventing the spread," he said.
