COVID-19 monitoring during holidays

Dr Stucki from the Warm Springs Health & Wellness Center says the clinic continues to work with the local COVID-19 response team to track cases in the region and are waiting to see along with everyone else – the impact the holidays will have on the spread of COVID “We’re still seeing COVID, we check the wastewater here in the community. That’s a help, it gives us a direction of how things might be moving. More importantly, we look at county data and how the hospitalization rates are happening in Bend, Redmond and Madras. And honestly it seems to be a little bit of a moving target of late. But the biggest news I would say for today, December 2022, more people are immunized, immunizations are very very effective, even for current variants, they’re very very good. And then the variant is not as severe, so that’s good. Hopefully people are vaccinated, but people who aren’t and choose not to, which again I would strongly urge that it’s a good good thing. Generally speaking they’re not getting as sick, but there’s lots of bad exceptions to that, so still the argument to get immunized. And then 3^rd and lastly, the medicine that many people have heard of, Paxlavid, it’s a good medicine. Now it’s not magic but it can decrease the number of days that you’re sick and it can decrease the rates of hospitalization, it’s a good thing.” For anyone who needs a COVID-19 Booster – you can call 541-553-2131 and schedule a time to get the vaccine. Typically, you can get in the same day you call. They are also seeing an increase in Flu cases and there is a Vaccine to help prevent that too.