Vanderburgh County health officials warn: COVID-19 isn't licked
Thomas B. Langhorne
EVANSVILLE, Ind. — To the usual admonitions about wearing masks, avoiding crowds and social distancing, local health officials added other COVID-19 warnings Wednesday.
Like, get your flu shot. Don't, for a minute, think COVID-19 is licked. And, oh yeah — don't think you can't get both at the same time.
In a news conference in the Civic Center, Vanderburgh County Health Officer Dr. Ken Spear urged residents not to be lulled into a false sense of complacency by Gov. Eric Holcomb's announcement earlier in the day that Indiana will move to Stage 5, the final phase of reopening, on Saturday.
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Holcomb cited improvements in the state's positivity rate over recent months for the move, but Spear had a reminder for local residents:
"The really sad part of this is, even though we went to 5.0 with the governor today, that really does not change the transmissibility or the lethality of the virus," Spear said.
The point was illustrated in neighboring Warrick County, to which the Indiana State Department of Health's statewide dashboard of COVID-19 cases attributed Wednesday's highest ratio of weekly cases per 100,000 people. Warrick, which has 63,000 residents, reported 288 weekly cases per 100,000 residents, by the ISDH formula.
Vanderburgh County, which has a population nearly three times as large, reported 181 weekly cases per 100,000. Gibson County, with just more than 33,600 residents, reported 240 weekly cases, with a tag attributing the number in part to congregate settings — environments where numbers of people reside or gather in close proximity.
More:Vanderburgh County sees boom in school-age COVID-19 cases, 49 new cases in all
And while Holcomb may point to improved case numbers statewide, Vanderburgh County's overall numbers are going in the opposite direction.
Just this past Sunday, the county reported 70 new COVID-19 cases, its largest one-day total yet. Last week, the county reported deaths related to COVID-19 on four consecutive days.
There's more: More than 200 school-age children have been added to Vanderburgh County's cases in the past four weeks, since the largest local school system, Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp., reopened to its entire student body.
Spear and the other medical professionals on hand Wednesday also urged residents not to underestimate a familiar foe — influenza. Already, they said, at least one person has contracted the flu and COVID-19 simultaneously.
Spear said recent medical research indicates people who have had their flu shots suffer "less severe" cases of COVID-19 if it strikes.
"The flu does not protect from COVID, but it appears to add some protection during your illness phase of COVID," the health officer said.
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Dr. Heidi Dunniway, chief medical officer of Ascension St. Vincent South Region, urged local residents to get their flu shots early and to urge their friends and loved ones to do the same.
"It's really critical this year because we know, based on a lot of the data coming in, there is definitely potential for a much more serious illness based on a co-infection with both of these viruses," Dunniway said.
People may be feeling fatigue with a process that includes persistent warnings and precautions, Dunniway said, but "this is going to be with us for awhile, so we need to be consistent."
Deaconess President Dr. James Porter said hospital capacity isn't strained by any stretch, but "we aren't typically this busy and this full this early in the (flu) season."
"With COVID already pushing those numbers up, when we look at what a typical flu season would be, we could definitely run into issues of having enough capacity and more widespread flu if we don't get those flu shots and do some things to get the COVID rates down now," Porter said.
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There's one more reason to get that flu shot, Porter warned. The capacity for COVID-19 testing is not unlimited.
"We're having to test a whole bunch of people who really have the flu, to see if they might also have COVID," he said. "That's going to further strain that capacity around COVID testing.
"So, we'd rather not have to be testing people who could have gotten a flu shot and prevented themselves from having that acute illness for COVID, when we'd like to focus that COVID testing on people who really do have COVID and have been exposed to COVID."
The Vanderburgh County Health Department buttressed Wednesday's warnings on Thursday by issuing a news release emphatically denying what it called an "urban myth" that the flu vaccine reduces a person's ability to fight COVID-19.
"Some studies have shown that the most heavily vaccinated individuals respond to new threats much better than individuals lacking a history of vaccination," said the statement signed by health department and local hospital officials.
There's not much history to go on for doctors who seek strategies to combat combined flu and COVID-19, Porter said on Wednesday.
"I think the most important message about influenza and COVID is, we have an immunization for influenza," he said. "We should be able to prevent most people from having to deal with both infections at the same time.
"It's all about getting the flu shot."