Pandemic notebook: Decline in positive cases continues with slight hitch

Monroe County’s confirmed positive COVID-19 numbers continue their rapid decrease, after a spike that saw them go up just about as fast.

That matches the trend across the state of Indiana.

Also showing a similar pattern for the county and the whole state is a hitch in the decrease for the rolling 7-day average of daily cases.

For Monroe County, the rolling average for the last five days has been stuck between 65 and 70 cases a day.

That’s a wrinkle that could be a side effect of the snowstorm that shut down many testing facilities on Feb. 3 and Feb. 4, just before the weekend. That could have led to a delay in testing or reports of tests until the following Monday and Tuesday, bumping the numbers for those two days, which are still a part of the current rolling daily average.

After the numbers from Feb. 5 and Feb. 6 are shed from the 7-day calculation, the rolling daily average for Monroe County will drop to around 50 cases a day—if numbers over the next couple of days roughly match the most recent five days.

That would still be about twice the rolling average at the same time last year.

And it’s about five times the number of daily cases the county board of health had set as a target for lifting the local mask mandate.

But based on deliberations by board of health members at their meeting last Thursday, they’re not inclined to continue to apply the same metrics to the Omicron variant that has caused the most recent surge. Omicron is a more infectious, but relatively “milder” variant of the virus.

At last Thursday’s board of health meeting, board member George Hegeman floated the idea of using those metrics to determine if the board wants to establish a mask mandate after the governor’s emergency order expires on March 4.

Responding to Hegeman was board member Mark Norrell, who pointed out those targets were set when the prevalent variant was the Delta. Norrell added that the vaccination rates were not as high when the board decided on its metrics. Norrell said he could imagine that with the Omicron variant the target metrics would never be achieved—because the virus would just become endemic.

Hegeman responded to Norrell by saying, “Point taken. We may just have a new form of influenza.”

From a legal standpoint, the current mask mandate requires an emergency health order from the governor, in order to persist, according to county attorney Jeff Cockerill. That means if the board of health takes no action, the local mask mandate will end with the expiration of the governor’s health order, which currently ends on March 4.

If Indiana governor Eric Holcomb were to extend the order past March 4, it’s possible the county board of health would still alter the local mask mandate.

The next meeting of the board of health is set for March 3 at 4:30 p.m.