COVID-19 cases drop dramatically

Eddy County's case count dropped into the single digits this past week, a welcome sign. There were only four active cases in Eddy County as of Wednesday, putting us among the North Dakota counties with the lowest active cases per 10,000. Counties directly north of us are hardest hit by this metric, including Benson, Ramsey, Towner and Pierce. A total of 7,749 tests have been conducted on Eddy County residents, a total that is more than three times the county's population.

This week brought a bit of good news, with the first doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine arriving Monday. The state received 6,825 Pfizer vaccines, and 831 doses were administered to health care workers in the state as of Wednesday. An additional 13,200 doses of Moderna vaccine have been ordered, which are pending delivery after FDA rules on an emergency use authorization for the vaccine.

More information regarding the state of North Dakota's vaccination plan can be found online at https://www.health.nd.gov/nd-covid-19-vaccination-plan.  

Prior to making a decision about whether to receive the COVID-19 vaccine consider the following:

• If you have a history of severe allergic reaction or anaphylaxis to a vaccine or other injectable therapy, you should NOT be vaccinated.

• Pregnant and nursing women can be vaccinated and should discuss the benefits and risks with their healthcare providers

• People who have previously had COVID-19 are also encouraged to get the vaccine but can delay their vaccine by up to 90 days from infection.

• Youth 16 and 17 years old can also receive the vaccine when their priority group is called. Therefore youth healthcare workers are eligible to receive it at this time, depending on the priorities issued by facilities administering the vaccine.

Locally, Central Pharmacy in New Rockford is now offering COVID-19 antibody tests. The antibody test looks to see whether an individual's immune system has responded to a COVID-19 infection. It takes 15 minutes to produce results from the test, and $45 and a drop of blood is all that's needed. The test looks for two kinds of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19: IgM antibodies, which happen early in an infection, and IgG antibodies, which are more likely to show up later.

You may be wondering- Will the antibody test tell me if I currently have COVID-19? No. A diagnostic test, which health professionals call a PCR or antigen test, looks for signs of active virus. It identifies if an individual has the virus in his or her body at the time the test is taken. An antibody test, in contrast, can indicate whether or not a person has had the virus at some point in the past. It could be gone, or the person could still be contagious.

Experts hope that antibody tests can give health officials a better idea of how common the virus is and how many people have been already infected by COVID-19. It also helps researchers understand who may be immune to the coronavirus.

The state has seen a 53% decrease in hospitalizations from the peak of over 300 in November. "Hospitalizations in our state have fallen rapidly" in the past few weeks, according to Kirby Krueger, Director of NDDoH Disease Control. The agency had conducted a quality control check of the hospitalization statistics, which resulted in a rapid reset of the numbers to reflect a more gradual trend. Of the 277 individuals reported to be hospitalized as of Tuesday, Dec. 15, 74 had been discharged in the past two weeks, and the remainder prior to Dec. 1, for a net decrease of 132.

Gov. Burgum offered encouraging words to residents during his Wednesday press conference. He said "2021 is gonna be better and different than 2020 because of the new tools that we have and because of the great work that North Dakotans are doing to help slow the spread of the virus."

North Dakota is still a leader in testing with the lowest positivity rate of any Northern Plains, Rocky Mountains or Great Lakes state in the region. The positivity rate has averaged 7% the last seven days compared to 42.9% in South Dakota and 35.4% in Iowa. The 14-day average positivity rate peaked around 16% in mid-November. Burgum said the goal is to get below 5%. As of Wednesday, no counties in North Dakota had more than 1,000 cases.

In the past week, 115 people have died, including 27 deaths reported on Wednesday alone. A total of 1,195 North Dakotans have died with the virus since the pandemic began. Eddy County recorded its sixth COVID death Wednesday.