Cattaraugus County reported another record number of COVID-19 cases on Wednesday — 285 — and no signs of the plateau in cases seen around the state, including Western New York.
The previous record was 283 cases on Jan. 13.
If there is any good news, Dr. Kevin D. Watkins, the county’s public health director said, it is that the county tends to lag behind statewide trends by a couple of weeks, so cases should be leveling out and heading downward soon.
The new cases Wednesday pushed the county’s COVID-19 total past the 15,000 mark, with more than 3,000 cases in the first 19 days of January. There have been 225 deaths since April 23, 2020.
The 3,174 cases so far this month is already double the 1,563 cases in December.
“We continue to see omicron making its way through Cattaraugus County,” Watkins said. “It is not plateauing as we’d hoped. It is continuing to incline on this bell-shaped curve.”
Watkins encouraged county residents to continue to wear masks in public, especially indoors, maintain social distancing and wash hands frequently.
Watkins said it is concerning that the number of breakthrough cases continues to climb. On Wednesday, there were 108 new cases involving fully vaccinated individuals and 177 who were unvaccinated.
“The breakthrough cases are eye-opening,” Watkins told the Times Herald. “This omicron variant can evade antibodies from vaccination or natural immunity.” The breakthrough cases, which number in the hundreds, include some who have also received a COVID-19 booster dose, he said.
While omicron can evade the antibodies from vaccine or natural immunity, the cases “tend to have less severe complications, fewer hospitalizations and deaths,” Watkins explained.
Watkins urged residents to take advantage of the free at-home COVID-19 test kits the federal government is distributing to homes via mail. They give test results in 30 minutes. The link to order COVID tests is:
Orders will usually ship in 7-12 days.
The tests can be used if someone is symptomatic so they can isolate quickly before coming into contact with others. “The more testing we do out there, the better. We can mitigate the virus by testing and isolating.
“If you are not vaccinated, now is the perfect time to get a first dose,” Watkins said. “We are still hosting vaccination clinics.”
To register for a free COVID-19 diagnostic test through the county health department, go online to:
Appointments for vaccinations can be made through the Cattaraugus County website by visiting: https://www.cattco.org/covid-vacc-info or call the COVID-19 Vaccine Hotline at (716) 701-3777 if you need assistance.
Watkins said of the 15,012 COVID-19 cases reported since March 2020, 552 of the cases are currently active. The health department has ended its contact tracing program with permission from the state Department of Health because of the overwhelming numbers of new cases each day.
Watkins said the health department doesn’t know if county residents are hospitalized outside the county. Olean General Hospital had 10 positive COVID-19 cases today.
Young people are a growing percentage of the number of new cases, Watkins said. Currently 21.8% of the cases involve residents age 19 and younger, while residents age 60 and older represent less than 20%.
The increasing number of youth cases is concerning, but it does not seem to have caused an increase in the number of youth hospitalizations. “It’s something we need to watch closely,” Watkins said.
Eighty-seven of the new cases Wednesday involved over-the-counter COVID-19 test kits, most distributed for free by the health department. So far, the at-home tests have detected 747 cases of COVID-19.
Wednesday’s new cases involved 143 from the southeast part of the county where there have now been 6,983 cases, or 46.4% of the county’s total.
There were 73 cases reported in the northeast where there have now been 2,984 cases, 37 in the southwest, where there have been 2,906 cases and 32 in the northwest where there have been 2,139 cases.
Men accounted for 234 of the new cases for a total of 7,188 cases and there were 51 women, who now represent 7,824 of the cases.
