REGIONAL- While health data reporting typically slows over the holidays, health officials are certain new numbers to be reported this week will show the continuing march of the COVID virus across the state.
St. Louis County and its affiliated health service area are tagged at medium levels of COVID activity in the Centers for Disease Control COVID map, along with 49 other Minnesota counties rated either medium or high. Hospital admissions in the county’s health service area were up in the last week of December by 34 percent over the prior week, a rate running well ahead of the national increase of 20.4 percent. Minnesota Department of Health data reports eight confirmed deaths from COVID in St. Louis County in the past four weeks, although reporting for the most recent week is incomplete.
The state’s most recent complete data set covers the period through Dec. 24 and shows a case rate of 116 per 100,000 people, up significantly from the case rate of 88.2 in the week following Thanksgiving. State case counts are considered to be abnormally low as they reflect lab-confirmed COVID cases but do not include cases confirmed by home testing.
Those 65 and over continue to account for the primary share of the increase at more than triple the rate of the overall population.
Driving the increase in COVID activity is the JN.1 variant, which over the past month has become the dominant variant across the country and also in the Great Lakes region, including Minnesota, where it accounts for 58 percent of cases. The CDC notes that while JN.1 activity is high, infections are causing less severe disease than earlier in the pandemic.
Those looking for some more hopeful data may be encouraged by the latest wastewater testing results from the University of Minnesota. In the past two weeks the COVID viral load in the northeast region has dropped by 32.9 percent, which could be an indicator that COVID activity has peaked.
County Senior Public Health Nurse Rillis Eklund spoke with the Timberjay on Tuesday about current conditions and issues in the county.
“What we see this week on the MDH website, and then what we’ll see when it updates on Thursday will probably look very different,” Eklund said. “We’re anticipating an upswing in respiratory illnesses just because people have been gathering and traveling and spending more time in close quarters.”
Eklund described the CDC’s designated level in terms of actions people are advised to take.
“We did bump up to that moderate level, so that means that people who were at greater risk of having severe COVID should wear a high-quality mask or respirator when they’re out in public,” Eklund said. “And people who visit people who are at higher risk of severe COVID should consider doing a COVID test before they visit that person and wear a mask when they visit.”
The triple-demic
A new term, triple-demic, is being used in many health settings to describe the possible combined impact of COVID, influenza, and RSV ( respiratory syncytial virus), all of which have been on the rise, albeit at differing rates.
“We’ve seen kind of a slow increase in influenza cases, and RSV has just been kind of bubbling along – we didn’t see too much increase this past week,” Eklund said. “We’ll probably see a larger uptick of RSV (and influenza) when the data comes out on Thursday.”
“The good news about the triple-demic,” Eklund continued, “is that there are vaccines to prevent illness in all three of those respiratory viruses. This is the first year we’ve had vaccines for RSV, so that’s pretty exciting.” All three can be taken in one office visit, if so desired, she said.
RSV infections are more likely to be severe in infants and older adults. Eklund said the vaccine is recommended for those 60 and over who have underlying heart or lung conditions. Pregnant women can also be vaccinated between 32 and 36 weeks of pregnancy, and the immunity will be passed along to their baby when it’s born, Eklund said. There’s also a monoclonal antibody available for infants younger than nine months.
Monoclonal antibodies are also available to treat COVID infections, but must be administered within the first few days of the infection to be effective. Eklund said that makes it important to take a COVID test at the first sign of symptoms.
She also talked about a misconception that’s become more common about COVID, that one has to lose their sense of taste or smell to have it.
“It comes up at least a couple of times a week here at the department,” Ecklund said. “It’s just not true. The loss of taste and smell are just some of the COVID symptoms. If you have fever, cough, tiredness, are feeling short of breath, muscle aches, any of those other COVID symptoms, you should test.”
Getting the updated COVID vaccine and testing when needed can also help people avoid long COVID, the persistence of symptoms for months or even years beyond the initial infection, Eklund said.
Vaccine effectiveness
A study from the Netherlands reported last week provides strong evidence for the effectiveness of the newest COVID booster in older adults.
The study included over 2,000 adults, 14 percent of whom had received the updated vaccine. For those aged 60 and older, the vaccine was 70.7 percent effective against hospitalization and 73.3 percent effective against admission to an intensive care unit.
MDH data shows that 52 percent of those 65 and over are up-to-date with the new booster. The overall up-to-date vaccination rate is 17.7 percent in the state and 19.5 percent in St. Louis County.