Park County: COVID-19 Cases Rises But No Omicron Detected
Written by Andrew-Rossi on January 13, 2022
As Park County experiences a mild increase of active COVID-19 cases accompanied by an ongoing decline of hospitalizations, there are still no signs of omicron.
Since the mild but highly contagious omicron variant of COVID-19 was first identified in Laramie, local healthcare professionals have been bracing for its inevitable arrival in Park County. But that hasn’t happened yet.
Dr. Aaron Billin, Park County Public Health Officer, shared the latest COVID numbers in one of his regular Facebook updates. While there is a “mild increase” of cases, they are all from the Delta variant.
According to Dr. Billin, Omicron has yet to be detected in the county.
As of Tuesday, January 11, there are 67 active cases in Park County – the highest number since late October 2021.
Park County’s “mild increase” is in sharp contrast to the State of Wyoming, which is undergoing what Dr. Billin calls a “sharp increase” of cases. There were 725 cases of COVID-19 confirmed on January 4 – that’s the highest amount of daily confirmed cases since mid-November 2020.
However, a rise in cases isn’t necessarily a dangerous sign for local healthcare professionals. The increase in cases is occurring while overall hospitalizations related to COVID continue to decline.
Courtesy Park County Public Health
Dr. Billin anticipates hospitalizations and deaths will continue to lower, despite the recent rise and the potential spread of omicron.
Observations of omicron suggest, while the variant is highly contagious, it causes a less severe infection than the Alpha and Delta variants.
At the time of Dr. Billin’s post, only four people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in all of Park County.
“As expected, Wyoming has seen a sharp increase, and Park County has seen a mild increase in active cases of COVID-19 with a continued decline in hospitalizations. It is anticipated that this will translate into a continued decline in the death rate for both Wyoming and Park County. Park County has averaged 0.6 deaths/day over the last seven days. Both Wyoming and Park County have seen a marked increase over the last week in both the COVID-19 effective reproduction number and the test positivity rate.”
