Lyon County continues its rather steady drumbeat with new coronavirus cases, but Public Health Emergency Preparedness Director Jennifer Millbern would be a lot more comfortable if those numbers were lower.
Millbern has said she would rather see new case activity in the 5-15 range per week before she feels confident that Lyon County is in a good spot with the pandemic.
Lyon County had 71 new cases last week, and the active caseload went from 76 last Monday to 120 this Monday after an increase in new cases that did not have a similar increase in recovered patients. Millbern says all the county’s metrics, including test positivity and transmission rates, put Lyon County in the red category for high community spread. A lot of that likely has to do with the number of both school-based and community-based activities, but Millbern admits it’s difficult to trace exactly where the steady stream of new cases is coming from.
Vaccination rates are moving up, but slowly. Lyon County is now at 59.8 percent of its vaccine eligible population — still ages 12-plus — that are fully vaccinated and 51.1 percent of the total population fully vaccinated. The eligible population will shift soon to include children as young as age 5 after CDC approval last week to get those students vaccinated.
