Boone County prepares to enter the endemic phase after Gov. Parson announced change
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Gov. Mike Parson announced Wednesday that Missouri will be shifting to an endemic phase of the COVID pandemic on Friday. Part of this phase will mean that the data on cases, hospitalizations and vaccinations will be scaled back.
"We will discontinue detailed county-level individual case reporting and adopt the CDC's color-coded community-level indicators for regions and counties. We want to be clear that this does not mean that COVID is no longer present, or that future spikes in cases will not occur. However, from the knowledge, we have gained and the tools we have acquired over the past two years the threat this virus poses has significantly diminished," Parson said.
However, at the local level Rebecca Roesslet, with the Columbia/Boone County Department of Public Health and Human Services, says she doesn't anticipate immediate changes to their daily tracking. "Our community really appreciates that ongoing data availability and that transparency. So at this point, we're still able to post the data as it's available to us. Keep in mind that as the information that we access to post the data changes, then we will have to adopt a change as well."
Although the state will move into the endemic phase, officials don't want the public to think that the virus will disappear.
"Endemic does not mean the end of COVID it simply means that COVID is now at a level prevalence in our nation, our state to be considered a constant presence within our population," said Director of the Department of Health and Senior Services, Paula Nickelson.
"How we view it moving forward and some of our mitigation strategies, they're going to be very similar to what we have been doing and what we talk about every season with influenza, cover your cough, stay home when you're sick, wash your hands and get your vaccine," Roesslet said.
As Missouri becomes the third state to enter the endemic phase behind California and Utah, Parson says we don’t know if this virus will ever completely go away. "We do know that there is no longer a need to live in crisis mode and that we can shift our response to meet the current needs of Missourians."
This endemic phase announcement comes as the Biden administration announced Wednesday that they are fighting for more money for coronavirus response from Congress to pay for testing, vaccines and treatments.
Gov. Parson responded to the news saying he doesn't believe covid has been handled very well since the administration took over.
"I'm not sure why we need to create more money to continue to fight COVID-19. I think when we tried to supply testing kits for everybody across the country. I think that was a wasteful part of the federal budgets," Parson added.
While the endemic phase begins, health experts say Covid will continue to be monitored closely but also be treated like a lot of other viruses in the world.
"It refers to the constant presence of the disease within a population or geographic area, just as influenza, HIV, tuberculosis and strep throat are endemic in our country. Entering an endemic phase does not mean there will not be future periods of increased cases and medical surges and the new variants of this virus may arise bringing new ways of infections," Nickelson said.
Roesslet says the department will be starting up Saturday vaccine clinics again in April and May, and those dates will soon be posted online.
