The number of overall new COVID-19 cases in Lane County has steadily declined since last weekend’s spike. Public Health officials say that’s ‘good news.’ However what was gleaned from studying cases identified between July 13th and 19th includes some bad news: community transmission has occurred.
Lane County Health and Human Services Public Information Officer Jason Davis explains.
“In that week we had 73 new cases. That’s a high number and 35.6% of those cases were sporadic or community transmission-- so they weren’t able to be tied epidemiologically back to a known case,” said Davis.
This is something Public Health does not want to see because it makes contact tracing and reducing disease spread extremely difficult. Davis did note 350 people are currently being “monitored” for symptoms after being exposed to known cases.
On Thursday, Lane County’s total case count was 419 with 42 people currently infectious.