As of Tuesday, Riverside County Public Health (RCPH) reported a total of 309 cases of COVID in the Idyllwild-Pine Cove community with 287 recovered and six deaths, leaving 16 currently active cases — 20 fewer active cases than a week ago, a 56% drop.
Anza has had 386 total cases with 331 recovered, seven deaths and 48 currently active cases — 36 fewer active cases than last week, a 43% drop.
As of Tuesday morning, the Dashboard of the Hemet Unified School District (HUSD) reported active cases (last two weeks) of COVID at Idyllwild School as being two students and one staff member, which is 0.98% of its combined student/staff population — the same as last week’s report. At Hemet High, 11 students and two staff members were reported as active cases (one fewer staff member than last week), which is 0.50% of its combined student/staff population. Hamilton School reported three students and no staff members with active COVID, 0.67% of its student-staff population, which is down from 0.89% last week.
The HUSD Dashboard states: “Positive cases will appear on the Dashboard for 14 days from the date they are reported and then will be removed after the 14th day.” So, HUSD’s rolling Dashboard reports active cases confirmed during the previous two weeks.
County-wide, as of Tuesday, RCPH reported there have been a total of 591,176 confirmed COVID cases (4,729 more than last week), with 6,223 total deaths (93 more than last week), and with 540,621 COVID cases having recovered, leaving 44,332 active cases in Riverside County, a 56.3% decrease from last week’s active cases.
The county currently reports 243 hospitalized COVID patients (148 fewer than last week), 43 of which are in intensive care (35 fewer than last week). On Tuesday morning, the state’s website reported 101 ICU beds available in Riverside County.
CDC has now replaced reporting “transmission areas” with “community levels.” A community level takes into consideration the number of people admitted to local hospitals during the past week, the number of total hospital beds with COVID patients, and new COVID cases during the past week. Community levels are rated Low, Medium and High. People in all community levels are recommended to stay up to date with their vaccines, and to get tested if they have symptoms. Also, people in Medium (Riverside Co.) levels should discuss with their health care provider whether to mask and take further precautions, while people in High community levels should wear a mask in public indoor settings, with additional precautions for people at high risk for severe illness.
As of Feb. 28, RCPH reports that in Riverside County, 18.5% of the population ages 5 to 11 are now “fully vaccinated” — while 50.9% of ages 12 to 15, about 56.5% of ages 16 to 24, 60.3% of ages 25 to 44, 73.3% of ages 45 to 64 and 75.9% of ages 65-plus have been fully vaccinated. Currently, the term “fully vaccinated” still does not include boosters.
As of Feb. 28, California reported 8,381,196 total confirmed COVID cases statewide (85,051 more than reported last week) with 84,700 total resulting deaths (1,827 more than last week).
As of Feb. 23, CDC’s current seven-day national moving average of daily new COVID cases was 75,208, a huge 38.2% reduction from the previous week’s seven-day moving average — a statistic that has been dropping precipitously for several weeks now. The Omicron variant now accounts for virtually all of the new cases in the U.S. with the Delta variant at zero. More than 78.6 million total COVID-19 cases have been reported in the U.S. to date.
CDC reported cases and hospitalizations in January 2022 were the highest since the pandemic began, but this month cases have trended downward.
Do vaccines work? Recall that back in December, CDC’s COVID Data Tracker showed unvaccinated adults ages 65 and older were 49 times more likely to be hospitalized than people in that age group who were up-to-date with their COVID vaccines, including boosters.
CDC advises that vaccination, along with other important prevention strategies, continues to be the best defense against severe COVID disease. Everyone ages 5 years and up is recommended to be vaccinated, with boosters for everyone ages 12 and older — specifically the Pfizer-BioNTech booster for those ages 12 to 15. CDC now recommends that people with weakened immune systems get their booster doses three months after their second dose instead of waiting five months.
COVID vaccinations are available in Idyllwild by appointment at Idyllwild Pharmacy (1-951-659-2135). Riverside County is not listing any place on the Hill as a future county vaccination location, but places in Hemet, San Jacinto, Banning, Beaumont, Moreno Valley, Desert Hot Springs and Palm Desert are listed. Visit https://rivcoph.org/COVID-19-Vaccine-with-Registration to schedule vaccinations through RCPH.
Also, CDC suggests visiting vaccines.gov, calling 1-800-232-0233 or texting your ZIP code to 438829 to find a vaccination site near you. Further CDC resources are available at www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/COVID-data/COVIDview/.
