At the end of this week, the Cattaraugus County Health Department will stop issuing its daily COVID-19 reports that started over 2½ years ago.

Since the first report, Cattaraugus County has recorded 24,125 cases of the coronavirus and 283 deaths — including two so far this month

The decision by the state and local health departments to curtail daily reporting coincides with an uptick in COVID-19 cases — due likely to family gatherings, travel and public events around the Thanksgiving holiday.

“Holiday COVID-19 bumps or increases in positive COVID-19 cases after a holiday gathering, are in-line with what we have seen in the past two years,” Dr. Kevin D. Watkins, the county’s public health director, said Friday. “Gatherings for holidays and large events often carry the risk of COVID-19 transmission along with other respiratory viruses like influenza, strep throat and RSV.”

Watkins reported to the Cattaraugus County Board of Health earlier that the health department, along with the state Department of Health, planned to end the daily COVID-19 reports.

“Since COVID-19 home tests were made available to the public, many of the positive COVID-19 home tests were not being reported to the department and the department was left to extrapolate the COVID-19 community transmission rates by using other methods like wastewater surveillance testing,” Watkins said.

“The tool that the state Department of Health uses to collect data on COVID-19 in counties called COMMCARE will end on Dec. 30 and on that date the Cattaraugus County Health Department will end its reporting of COVID-19 numbers to the community,” he said.

Although COVID-19 remains, Watkins said “we’re in a much stronger place than we were in spring of 2020 or even the winter of 2021-2022. We are in a new phase of the pandemic.”

He said there is significantly less risk of severe illness, hospitalization and death compared to earlier in the pandemic due to tools such as vaccination, boosters, testing and treatments.

The health department is no longer tracing contacts of people who test positive, a practice that ended in January when there were 4,739 positive tests — far too many for the county’s COVID-19 tracers to follow. People were instead told to isolate for 10 days after testing positive. That was later lowered to five days.

“Individuals with underlying health conditions such as hypertension, high cholesterol (hyperlipidemia), obesity, diabetes with complication and coronary atherosclerosis and other heart disease, have been reported to have a higher risk of severe illness when these individuals contract COVID-19, and if not treated in time, can lead to hospitalization and even death,” Watkins said.

The number of COVID-19 tests has gone down from nearly 2,000 a week to just over 600 for the week ending Dec. 15, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 Data Tracker.

Since at-home tests have become readily available, 3,143 individuals have reported positive tests to the health department.

Data from the CDC shows for the seven days ending Dec. 21, there were 63 cases of COVID-19 reported in the county, a 90.9% increase from the previous week.

There were seven new COVID-19 admissions at Olean General Hospital during the week through Dec. 20, up 14.3% from the previous seven-day period.

The positivity for the seven days through Dec. 19 was up 8% from the previous seven-day period.

The 608 tests performed during the week up to and including Dec. 15 were up 1.4% from the previous seven-day period.

There are 48,894 county residents who have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 44,166 have completed their primary series.

Of the county’s most vulnerable population, those age 65 and older, 95% have had at least one dose of the vaccine, 85.9% have completed their vaccine series and 37.5% have had a vaccine booster.

Of the five and younger age group, 13.2% have had at least one dose of the vaccine 14.4% of the 12 and under population, and 15.6% of those 18 and under.

“Most of the COVID-19 deaths reported were from unvaccinated residents,” Watkins said.

The health department will host another vaccine clinic on Jan. 7 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the College Center at the Cattaraugus County Campus of Jamestown Community College on North Union Street. Appointments are encouraged, but a limited number of walk-ins will be available.

To reserve an appointment for the vaccine or the new bivalent booster, go to www.cattco.org. There is a COVID-19 tab under the health department.