Wayne County weekly COVID cases, positivity rate push back into orange metric territory

RICHMOND, Ind. — Wayne County's improvement to a yellow COVID-19 metric score will be short-lived.

The county will record an orange score this week based on its 149 cases and 6.5% seven-day positivity rate Nov. 1-7, according to the Indiana State Department of Health update Monday. Those are both increases from the 125 cases and 4.3% positivity rate that enabled a yellow score of 1.0 last week, the first yellow score since mid-August.

The 149 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases in the Monday-Sunday period the state uses to calculate metric scores will adjust to more than 200 cases per 100,000 people and score three points. The positivity rate exceeding 5.0% will score one point. The 2.0 average is the lowest orange score.

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The weekly cases are a 19.2% increase over the Oct. 25-31 total, and the increase ends nine consecutive weeks of case declines.

Because two consecutive weeks of a lower metric score are required to adjust a county's advisory level, Wayne County remained at the orange level last week. Randolph, Henry and Franklin counties also were in the orange level, while Fayette and Union counties were in the yellow level.

Randolph and Henry counties will score orange this week, while Fayette, Union and Franklin counties will score yellow.

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Overall, Wayne County has reported 11,292 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases and 258 deaths from COVID-19 complications. The case and death totals for other area counties are:

• Darke County: 7,881 positive cases and 168 deaths;

• Henry County: 8,455 positives and 159 deaths;

• Fayette County: 4,133 positives and 91 deaths;

• Franklin County: 2,701 positives and 43 deaths;

• Preble County: 5,868 positives and 132 deaths;

• Randolph County: 3,587 positives and 103 deaths;

• Union County: 1,092 positives and 16 deaths.

Indiana has recorded 1,035,141 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases and 16,355 COVID-related deaths through Sunday. The Ohio Department of Health's Sunday update reported 1,572,197 cases and 25,067 deaths.

Wayne County last week saw a 44.2% drop in the number of residents becoming fully vaccinated, with a 135 becoming vaccinated compared to 242 the previous week. The number of residents receiving a first dose of a two-shot vaccine rose by two, from 176 to 178, during the week in which ages 5 to 12 became eligible for the Pfizer vaccine.

Overall, 28,861 county residents are fully vaccinated and another 1,826 have received one dose of Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. That means about 43.8% of the county's population is fully vaccinated and about 46.6% has received some vaccine.

Reid Health announced that it passed the 50,000 vaccine dose plateau over the weekend, according to a news release. The health network began administering vaccinations in mid-December.

It maintains two Richmond vaccination sites, including 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Thursday, noon-4 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday at Reid Plaza, 2300 National Road W., and 6 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday on the main concourse at the hospital, 1100 Reid Parkway.

The Wayne County Health Department continues providing vaccinations from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. Monday through Friday at the health department, 100 S. Fifth St.

Appointments for the Reid and health department sites may be made at ourshot.in.gov.

In its Monday update, Reid reported 25 patients in COVID-19 containment areas, with four in intensive care and three on ventilators. Five of the patients in containment areas are vaccinated, while all of those in intensive care and on ventilators are unvaccinated.

This article originally appeared on Richmond Palladium-Item: County weekly COVID cases, positivity rate push into orange territory