EVANSTON — As confirmed COVID-19 cases continue to climb again, Uinta County Public Health Nurse Manager Kim Proffit has expressed concern about the ongoing spike, both locally and in neighboring Utah. Proffit said as of Tuesday, July 27, there were 32 active cases compared to six active cases two weeks ago, with 41 new cases confirmed in the past week. The county also had another COVID-related fatality confirmed in the past week, the county’s 14th according to the Wyoming Department of Health website.

The increased numbers are concerning, said Proffit, but she also expressed concern about the results of genetic sequencing at the Wyoming State Lab, which showed that none of the Uinta County samples sent for sequencing were the more contagious Delta variant, which has been driving an explosion in cases around the U.S. and around the world. Instead, Proffit said the samples from Uinta County were the so-called UK variant.

“While I was surprised that Delta has not yet arrived, it is actually a little more spooky for me,” she said. “We’re having our little uptick and the Delta variant isn’t to blame. We can count on it arriving here at some time in the near future and that concerns me for further upticks.”

Proffit said she is also concerned due to the situation in Utah. “Utah referral hospital ICUs are at critical capacity and they’re having to reduce surgeries and other inpatient admissions where possible,” she said.

As cases continue to increase around the country, the Centers for Disease Control has released updated guidance about masking, including for both unvaccinated and fully vaccinated individuals. Proffit said State Public Health Officer Dr. Alexia Harrist explained that new guidance and Wyoming’s position by stating, “CDC now recommends fully vaccinated individuals wear masks in public indoor settings in areas with substantial or high community transmission. The indicators CDC uses to measure transmission differ somewhat from those WDH uses. For example, WDH calculates metrics over 14 days instead of seven and WDH takes into account the number of active cases to account for smaller counties where relatively few cases can cause large changes in rates. To account for these differences, WDH recommends that fully vaccinated individuals who live in counties in the yellow, orange or red zones according to WDH metrics wear masks in public indoor settings.”

Per those WDH metrics, Uinta County is currently in the orange zone, although Proffit said WDH metrics do not reflect what’s happening “on the ground” in the county, where 25% of all tests conducted at Evanston Regional Hospital in the past week have come back positive for COVID-19. The state metrics do not yet reflect that positivity rate, which would put the county in the red zone, meaning a greater than 10% positivity rate.

Proffit said the CDC also released updated recommendations for schools, which include “universal masking by staff and students in K-12 settings regardless of vaccination status or local community transmission levels.” Proffit said this differs from previous guidance that only recommended masking for unvaccinated people. However, she said, at this point, WDH is not planning statewide masking orders and each school district will be determining their own policies with support from local public health.

While each school district will be creating and implementing its own policy related to masking, isolation and quarantine requirements for exposed individuals are still in place and have been updated to include different standards for vaccinated and unvaccinated people.

“While fully vaccinated individuals do not need to quarantine after an exposure, CDC now recommends fully vaccinated people be tested 3-5 days following a known exposure to someone with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 and wear a mask in public indoor settings for 14 days or until they receive a negative test result.”

The CDC guidance continues by stating, “Most fully vaccinated people with no COVID-like symptoms do not need to quarantine or be restricted from work following an exposure to someone with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 if they wear a mask in public indoor settings for 14 days after exposure or if they receive a negative test results from a test taken 3-5 days after exposure. They should isolate if they test positive.”

The bottom line then is that unvaccinated individuals who are exposed in a setting where people are unmasked will still have to quarantine, while vaccinated individuals will not, although it is recommended they wear a mask until receiving a negative test result 3-5 days after exposure.

Proffit again emphasized the importance of being vaccinated, which not only helps decrease case numbers and protect individual and community health but also helps prevent the need to quarantine. She said people still continue to get the vaccines in the county and, in fact, the percentage of those in the county who are vaccinated bumped up almost 2% in the past two weeks. Just under 30% of the county’s population was fully vaccinated as of July 26, according to WDH data, which includes all county residents. Breaking those numbers down by age group, just over 39% of those 18 and over, approximately 58% of those 65 and over, and about 10% of those aged 12-17 are fully vaccinated.

Vaccines are available at public health, which is conducting clinics on Fridays both in Evanston and the Bridger Valley, and at drugstores throughout the county. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have both been shown to be more than 90% effective at preventing severe illness related to COVID-19 and are effective against the Delta variant. More than 95% of COVID cases that have been confirmed in Wyoming since May 1 are in unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated individuals, according to Proffit.