Craig Felty
HANCOCK COUNTY — Federal and local officials are reporting an increase in COVID-19 cases in Hancock County.
The rise comes amid the ones that have been reported nationally and internationally over the past several weeks attributed to the novel coronavirus’ omicron subvariants, BA.4 and BA.5.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently changed the county’s COVID-19 community level from low to medium and reports 134 new cases of the virus between July 11 and 17. The agency reports no deaths from the disease in that time period.
Hancock Regional Hospital is seeing more COVID-19 activity as well, according to Craig Felty, vice president, chief nursing officer and chief operating officer.
“We definitely are seeing an uptick in cases and we’re seeing an uptick in admissions,” Felty said.
As of early Tuesday afternoon, the hospital had seven COVID-19 patients, he continued, adding that’s the most since the first quarter of the year.
“The good thing is they are definitely in no way as sick as they were in the past surges we’ve had,” Felty said. “We’ve not had a person on a ventilator with COVID in many, many months, which is a good sign.”
Felty said the hospital’s outpatient sector is experiencing a similar rise, including new cases reported in doctors’ offices and the emergency department.
“It’s just a good thing it seems to be a milder illness than what we’ve experienced with some of the other variants,” he said.
The recent trend could be due to multiple factors, Felty said, including the tendency for viruses to mutate.
“This is a normal thing that viruses do. They find ways around the immunities out there and find ways to make themselves stronger and make themselves more virulent,” he said.
The virus could also be spreading faster because it’s a popular time of year for people to travel and get together, he continued, with the warm weather and recent Fourth of July holiday.
Felty encouraged the same precautions he’s advocated throughout the pandemic, including getting vaccinated and boosted for the protection it provides against the virus.
The CDC recommends people get tested if they have COVID-19 symptoms, which include fever, chills, cough, shortness of breath, difficulty breathing and fatigue, among others. The agency also recommends wearing a mask to those who have symptoms, a positive test or exposure to someone with COVID-19.
“We definitely are learning more and more every day about the disease, and we definitely have more tools in our arsenal than what we’ve had,” Felty said.
