An illustration of COVID-19 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
HYANNIS – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently switched to a new metric when it comes to their guidance on COVID safety guidelines, one that places Barnstable County firmly in the green, according to local health officials.
In his most recent weekly coronavirus update, Falmouth Health Agent Scott McGann outlined the new guidelines that focus less on case numbers and more on hospitalization numbers.
With at-home tests that are not recorded by public health agencies becoming the norm and most safety guidance having been geared towards minimizing hospitalizations in the first place, McGann said the new metrics are more focused.
“Omicron had less hospitalizations, if the next variant is even less severe then it’s not about the cases, its about the impact on hospitalizations. A lot of this mitigation was to stop the spread to keep hospitalizations minimized with the things that can go wrong with not having enough beds,” said McGann.
According to the metrics, if new COVID cases per 100,000 people in a week are fewer than 200, and new COVID admissions to hospitals per 100,000 are fewer than 10 and percent of staffed inpatients beds occupied by COVID patients is also less than 10 percent, then a community is in the low level transmission category.
By these guidelines, Barnstable County checks off all the green categories, showing low transmission.
The CDC says that those in the low category can forgo masking, though the state has not yet adopted the metrics in an official capacity and local safety mandates like mask requirements still have priority.
The Massachusetts Public Health Department continues to perform daily and weekly COVID updates on its online dashboard here.
About Grady Culhane
