While COVID-19 has been on everybody’s mind these past two years, it appears that the hold it once held on people and public health loosened. Across the nation and even in Beltrami County, methods of tracking cases have changed to a surveillance-type of monitoring, much like influenza cases.

While the total number of cases is still under heavy surveillance, tracking of active cases has relaxed as agencies like Beltrami County Public Health are more focused on areas of higher transmission rates, such as elder care facilities and schools. Beltrami County Health is not tracking active cases as often, but instead want to focus on hospitalizations and total cases.

There are current conversations about plans for the next possible surge, but public health officials are wondering what a possible next surge would look like. The question remains whether it will be like the flu season or more like the past two years of COVID.

“There might be times in time of increased case numbers or increased activity, increased virus circulating in our communities, that some of those monitoring numbers might look a little bit different,” says Megan Heuer, Beltrami County Health and Human Services Director. “So we might be looking a little bit more at our positivity rate, we might be looking a little bit more at what is our health care facility able to do for testing capacity, those types of things. But those types of numbers are switching to look more at capacity.”

Heuer also says that vaccination numbers are not skyrocketing like before, but people are still getting the jab thanks to work from Beltrami County Health and places like Sanford Health.

Beltrami County’s COVID case numbers are at one of the lowest points since the last wave started, even managing to go a couple of days without anybody in the hospital with COVID. However, health officials still encourage people to use safe mitigation practices to protect everyone, including themselves.

By — Mary Balstad