Blaine County sees surge in COVID cases no hospitalizations

While the U.S. recently reached the disturbing milestone of one million COVID-19 deaths last week, and some areas, including locally, are seeing increases, deaths remain low, as cases become less and less common overall.

Blaine County, particularly Fort Belknap has seen a recent spike in cases. Between May 10 and May 19, there were only three new cases, but between then and May 23, 21 new cases were confirmed, and on May 24 alone there were 12 cases, with another 13 the next day.

"We are seeing an increase in COVID-19 activity once again," the most recent report from the Blaine County Health Department says, " ... Please be vigilant. COVID is not over."

Wednesday's release reported 42 active cases an no hospitalizations.

The release reminds people to wash their hands regularly, cover their mouths when coughing or sneezing and to stay away from people who are sick, and keep themselves away from others when they are sick.

"Above all else, please be kind," the release says.

And it reminds people of opportunities for the most important way to fight the spread of COVID and avoid serious illness and death - vaccination and boosters.

Fort Belknap Indian Community, whose numbers are included in either Blaine or Phillips County, reported 10 new cases Tuesday and 11 Wednesday, with 39 active cases and no hospitalizations reported Wednesday.

Despite this recent rise in cases, the area has seen a massive dropoff in its new case numbers in the past few months, and the last COVID-19 death in the area was reported at the end of March.

In Hill County between May 18 and May 23, there were only 11 new cases with 14 meeting the criteria for being considered recovered, and between May 10 and May 17 there were only 13 new cases.

Hill County Health Department in its update for Monday said the county had three active cases and no hospitalizations.

While some areas of the U.S. have seen spikes in recent weeks, the overall trend of plummeting case numbers, and, even more so, plummeting deaths have remained steady, even as the U.S. reached one million deaths last week, a grim reminder of how many the country has lost to the virus.

Earlier this month, President Joe Biden marked the "tragic milestone" with a statement urging the U.S. to remember those lost, to do whatever can be done to save more lives and to not grow numb.

"One million empty chairs around the dinner table. Each an irreplaceable loss," he said the statement. "Each leaving behind a family, a community, and a nation forever changed because of this pandemic."

In the time since that statement some areas of the U.S. have seen spikes in infections.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's May 25 COVID-19 update shows most of New England at high community spread, as well as parts of the northern midwest, and a few counties in central Montana.

Some parts of the west coast, Washington, D.C., Hawaii, most of Alaska and southern Florida, as well as scattered counties throughout the country are listed as areas of medium transmission, but the majority of the U.S., almost 76 percent, is considered an area of low transmission.

As for U.S. territories, all of Puerto Rico is considered an area of high transmission, and the U.S. Virgin Islands is medium. All other territories are considered low.

The recent spikes have caused some institutions to reimpose indoor mask mandates, but for most of the U.S. life has more or less returned to normal, but opinions among experts as to where the U.S. is at in terms of the pandemic is somewhat mixed.

In an interview with the PBS Newshour last month, Biden's Chief Medical Advisor Anthony Fauci said the U.S. was out of the "pandemic phase," but later said he thinks his statement could easily be misinterpreted and later clarified, "What I'm referring to is that we are no longer in the acute fulminant accelerated phase of the outbreak."

"We're in a somewhat of a transitional phase where the cases' numbers have decelerated - and hopefully we're getting to a phase of somewhat better control, where we can begin to start to resuming more easily normal activities," he added.

While experts around the U.S. differ in how optimistic they are for the near future, there is widespread agreement that while the threat of COVID-19 has dropped significantly, it is not in an endemic state in the U.S. and likely will not be in time for summer.

Experts predict the summer will see a spike in cases like last year and the year before, but it will almost certainly be far less devastating due to the number of people who have gotten the vaccine and the virus becoming less deadly over time.

While cases in the U.S. have been rising recently, deaths have become less and less common as the virus appears to be less and less deadly.

Epidemiologists say that is more or less the natural course of events for viruses like this and the pandemics they create, but they also point out that it can still be deadly, especially for those who haven't gotten vaccinated, or are immuno-surpressed.

Outside of the U.S. the pandemic remains a greater threat, particularly in poorer nations that often lack the health infrastructure to combat the pandemic.

Last week the World Health Organization cautioned that the pandemic, on the global stage, is certainly not over, and called attention to the plight of these poorer nations, particularly those in Africa, which have been seeing significant spikes in COVID-19, as well as the fact that less testing is going on.

"We lower our guard at our peril," said United Nations Health Agency Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at WHO's annual meeting, " ... declining testing and sequencing means we are blinding ourselves to the evolution of the virus."

"It's not over anywhere until it's over everywhere," Tedros added.

He also said this is happening amid an ongoing campaign of misinformation and disinformation about the virus and the vaccines for it.

While vaccination rates across the world have improved slowly but surely, misinformation and disinformation have been one of a number of factors that have stymied efforts to immunize enough of the U.S. and the world to reach herd immunity.

Recent efforts by social media platforms, the primary way false information about the virus and vaccines spreads, have cut down on the spread of misinformation and disinformation, but public health experts continue to express concerns about the ongoing spread of falsehoods.