COVID-19 cases are on the rise across the lower Kenai Peninsula.
That’s according to South Peninsula Hospital’s Derotha Ferraro and Public Health Nurse Lorne Caroll who were guests on KBBI’s COVID Brief with Josh Krohn on Thursday.
Ferraro started off the conversation with an update from the hospital. She said for the week ending June 21, there were six visits to the ER related to COVID and one new hospitalization. She says that week, the hospital conducted 480 tests and of those, 93 were positive, giving us a local positivity rate of about 19 percent.
Public Health Nurse Lorne Caroll said the state looks at trends over the past one to two weeks rather than on a day-by-day basis. He said there's solid reasoning behind that.
“We tend to look at seven-day and 14-day averages," Caroll said. "What that does is gives us a better picture of incidence on a climb or decline over a span of time. And so that helps to kind of ease up the course line and can help account for things like backlogs for weekends or staffing, when there's a back up in reporting."
Ferraro added that nearly 37 vaccines were administered in Homer last week. And, in light of the CDC’s recent authorization for vaccinating children as young as six months old, she said Homer's vaccination rate may go up.
She said Homer Medical Center and the Family Care Clinic both have those vaccines in stock, and are available by appointment.
“They have both brands: Pfizer and Moderna," Ferraro said. "The Pfizer is a three-shot series for that age group. And the Moderna is a two-shot series. We all know that things change as they learn more about duration, etc. But at the moment, the Pfizer is a three-shot series and Moderna is a two-shot for the six months to five years of age [group].”
For more information about the newly-approved vaccine series for children, boosters and global numbers, you can find KBBI’s full COVID Brief at kbbi.org or as a podcast on your favorite app.