District Health Officer Kevin Dick today sounded a somber alarm for the county that, regardless of what health officials had hoped for several weeks ago, Labor Day weekend gatherings have contributed to the spread of COVID-19.
The seven-day rolling average of new cases over the past week has increased significantly, running at almost 88 new cases per day up from the mid-50s last week. That’s an increase of almost 50%, Dick said, and the numbers are consistent with the increasing case positivity rate announced by the state’s team this week.
Officials believe these new cases are the result of private gatherings that took place during the Labor Day weekend and parties off-campus attended by University of Nevada, Reno students.
However, whether public gatherings such as bar reopenings and rallies are driving the increase of cases remains unclear. Dick said public health officials will need to wait another week or two to understand the infection trend. But, he said, “We are seeing that people are becoming infected just being out and about in the course of commerce and encountering other people and being exposed.”
He asked people to be “very cautious and avoid gatherings.”
“We as a nation have set a significant and sad milestone of over 200,000 people that have been killed by COVID-19,” he added. “We are at 154 deaths in Washoe County. I think it’s important to recognize that each of these is a life lost…we also have many people that have not fully recovered and continue to suffer effects of COVID-19 even though they have gotten better from where they were.”
County conducts second COVID-19 community survey
The health district is carrying out a survey to understand the spread of COVID-19 occurring in the community to date. Dick urged people to participate.
“This [survey] is similar to a study that we did in June where we mailed invitations to randomly selected households so that we have a scientifically designed approach to having people participate to have their antibodies tested to see if they have been infected with COVID-19 and developed antibodies to date,” he said.
“We are going to be beginning specimen collection from those individuals this Sunday. We did mail out a second invitation letter to try to get more response from those households. We are urging those residents who received our letters to please call us to sign up to participate. …Help us to better understand what may be occurring with COVID-19 in our community.
“As you recall from the results that we had from the June survey, we found out that it was approximately five times as many cases of COVID-19 estimated to have occurred in the community as we had detected to-date with the testing,” Dick said.
He added that the new survey will update the health district’s understanding of the current status of COVID-19 in the community.
Numbers at-a-glance
Total COVID-19 cases in Washoe County: 8,878 (+81 from 9/22)
- Deaths: 154 (+0)
- Recovered: 7,579 (+113)
- Active Cases: 1,145 (-32)
- Tests performed: 134,342 (+2,920)
Hospital bed and ventilator information According to the Nevada Hospital Association, in Washoe County as of Sept. 22
- 61% of all staffed short-term, acute-care hospital beds are occupied (+0% since 9/21)
- 39% of the all Intensive Care Unit beds are occupied (+1%)
- 18% of all ventilators are in use (-1%)
NOTE: Numbers are for all hospital patients in Washoe County and not just COVID-19 patients.
