Vermont’s statewide Covid-19 levels hit “medium” last week, the state Department of Health reported Wednesday, marking the first time the state has been above “low” levels since June.
According to the department’s weekly surveillance report, the higher rating was based on the number of hospital admissions for the disease, which rose to 73, or 11.7 per 100,000 people, in the past week. That’s the highest rate of hospital admissions reported since mid-May. A rate exceeding 10 hospital admissions per 100,000 people triggers the department’s “medium” designation.
Similarly, the number of people currently in the hospital with Covid reached 66 on Wednesday, the most Covid patients the state has reported since May. That includes six intensive care patients, about in line with recent weeks.
The department said that a seasonal increase in Covid is not unexpected, while urging people to get the Covid bivalent booster, which targets the Omicron strain of the virus currently dominating the state.
“Freely available bivalent booster vaccines are effective at protecting people from getting seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying,” the department said on its website along with the report.
The department has not released data on the bivalent booster campaign so far in October. As of Sept. 29, about 26,000 doses had been distributed, trailing previous vaccination campaigns.
Covid cases, based primarily on PCR tests, have also risen but more moderately. The department reported 662 cases in the past week, compared with 623 the week before. The state averaged between 400 and 600 cases per week over the summer.
Covid cases and hospitalizations remain low at a national level, but nearby states have also reported recent increases, according to The New York Times. New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts have reported the biggest rise in hospitalizations in the past two weeks.
BA.5 remains the predominant Covid variant in the New England region, but it appears to be declining, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Other subvariants of Omicron such as BF.7 made up about 30% of recent samples.
Using the same criteria as the health department, the CDC rated four Vermont counties — Orleans, Lamoille, Caledonia and Rutland — as having “medium” Covid levels as of Thursday, while Bennington had “high” Covid levels. The rest of the state had low levels.
The CDC recommends that high-risk people in medium-level counties take action to protect themselves, such as wearing a mask. In high-level counties, it recommends that the general public take action to prevent the spread of Covid.
The health department added six new Covid deaths to its data, bringing October’s total to eight so far. In total, 734 people have died of Covid in Vermont since the beginning of the pandemic.
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