KINGWOOD — Preston County should expect to see COVID-19 numbers like never before over the next several weeks.
That’s because the omicron variant of the virus has made its way to Preston County, said V.J. Davis, Preston County Health Department administrator. Davis briefed the county commission on the county’s COVID situation at its regular meeting Tuesday.
“We’re definitely starting to see another surge,” Davis said. “I mean, we’ve kind of, we’ve been underseeing a surge since Oct. 1 when we started seeing delta. And we’re kind of moving right from delta into this omicron.”
In the past seven days, there has been what Davis called a pretty significant uptick in cases, with 202 new cases, averaging about 28 new cases a day. The county’s infection rate has gone from 23.93 to 80.76 and percent positivity has gone from 4.11 to 10.49.
“When you see those numbers go up that drastically, that means we’re starting to see this surge, which, you know, has been predicted, and state officials are telling us the next three, four weeks, we’re gonna see numbers like we’ve never seen before.”
Davis said omicron is highly contagious but doesn’t seem to cause people to get as sick. Hopefully that will mean fewer deaths.
Since the pandemic started, Preston County has had 6,533 total cases and 112 deaths.
“What’s most alarming to me is in the last three months, we have had 2,017 cases and 33 deaths just in the last three months. So delta really took a toll on people,” Davis said.
Just 11.6% of cases in Preston County are breakthrough cases, meaning about 89% of cases are unvaccinated individuals.
Davis said the health department is really trying to stress vaccinations — which are not hard to get. Vaccinations are widely available at Walmart, pharmacies, the hospital and the health department. The department is also working with the senior center to host a vaccine clinic there. About 50% of the county is vaccinated.
“Getting a vaccine right now is not hard at all. It’s just convincing people to get it is hard, that’s the hard sell right now,” Davis said.
Commissioner Dave Price asked about testing capabilities in the county. Davis said the hospital has plenty of PCR tests that require a few days to get results. It’s the at-home and rapid tests that are scarce.
Davis asked the commission for permission to use the lower parking lot for the county annex and the parking lot of the McGrew building for drive-thru testing or vaccination clinics as needed.
The commission voted unanimously to allow that.
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