Dickinson County Seeing Significant Increase In COVID Cases With Omicron
Dickinson County Seeing Significant Increase In COVID Cases With Omicron
January 20, 2022Steve Schwaller
(Spirit Lake)– Like most other counties in the region, Dickinson county is also seeing a big increase in COVID cases currently. Katy Burke of Dickinson County Public Health tells KUOO news as of today (Thurs.) the county’s positivity rate is at 27 percent…
“What’s really easier to understand is in the last seven days we’ve seen 162 positive tests and that’s really a limited number because that doesn’t include any of the home rapid tests that aren’t reported. These are just the ones that the State Hygienic Lab is able to see and get out to us in public health.”
Burke says just about all of the cases locally are the Omicron variant…
“The State Hygienic Lab does a sequencing of about 300 random samples across the counties and they’re seeing almost 80 percent of them in omicron and the samples they pulled from Dickinson, all of them have been omicron lately for the month of January.”
Burke says the surge is coming simultaneously with an increase in flu and other respiratory illnesses making the rounds as well right now…
“You know if you’re feeling sick, stay home. It might be COVID or it might be the stomach bug but that’s another good thing not to share with others and also if you haven’t had a chance to get your vaccine yet or if you are ready to get your booster, time to get that and be up to date, and just the basic common sense things of washing hands, socially distancing, considering wearing a mask when you’re in crowded spaces especially when you’re around immunocompromised individuals. So it’s just getting back to the basics of those things that make a big difference in the spread because we know omicron is just incredibly contagious.”
Burke says five people are hospitalized with COVID as of today (Thurs.) at Lakes Regional Healthcare.
Burke reminds us that self-administered PCR tests are available at doors “A” and “L” at Lakes Regional Healthcare. She says the availability of rapid test kits at stores and pharmacies in the region is hit and miss, however they are available for free through a federal website that went live earlier in the week. They can be ordered at COVIDtests.gov but it will take a week to 10 days for them to be shipped upon ordering.
