Lane County coronavirus update, April 27: Fauci says US is 'out of the pandemic phase'

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Lane County Public Health reported 74 confirmed or presumptive new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, raising the countywide case count to 58,266. The total local death count remained at 529.

The past week's average new case count is 62; the week before it was 43. From April 18 to April 24, the University of Oregon reported 68 cases from staff or students.

The number of county residents reported hospitalized for the virus Wednesday was 11, up one from Tuesday, with three people in intensive care, up one from Tuesday and two on a ventilator, also up one from Tuesday.

As cases trend upwards again, LCPH recommends residents get any boosters they're eligible for, keep gatherings small, utilize outdoor spaces when possible and consider wearing a mask when in crowded, enclosed spaces.

As of last Monday, April 20, 276,806 people in Lane County — 72.58% of the total population — received first or second vaccine doses with 679,313 doses administered in Lane County, according to the Oregon Health Authority.

— The Register-Guard

Why Dr. Fauci is saying the US is 'out of the pandemic phase' of COVID-19

The United States is "out of the pandemic phase" after more than two years of COVID-19 causing tens of millions of cases and hundreds of thousands of deaths, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser for President Joe Biden.

Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, made the comment Tuesday on "PBS NewsHour."

"We are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase," Fauci told PBS's Judy Woodruff. "Namely, we don't have 900,000 new infections a day, and tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations, and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level right now."

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has not ended, according to the organization's designation.

Read more of this USA Today story here.

Effective treatments for COVID are now available. Why are they not being used?

At the beginning of the year, it was hard to access treatments for COVID-19 because they were in high demand and supply was tight.

Now, antiviral treatments like Paxlovid are readily available, but not many people are benefiting because they don't know the drugs exist.

"There are so many doses sitting on shelves not being used because of a lack of education among physicians," said Dr. Daniel Griffin, an infectious disease specialist at Northwell Health in New York.

"It's a miracle drug. It's just not being utilized," agreed Dr. Peggy Duggan, executive vice president and chief medical officer at Tampa General Hospital.

That's largely a result of shifts in the pandemic, Duggan said.

Fewer people are falling sick today compared with the numbers infected in December and January, so treatments aren't top of mind, she said.

Also, while specialists and hospitals were most likely to see COVID-19 patients earlier in the pandemic, primary care doctors are now on the front lines, and it's hard to educate this much larger population of doctors about available treatments, she said.

Read more of this USA Today story here.

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Lane County coronavirus update, April 27: Cases, hospitalizations increase