Iowa Specialty Hospital

Local COVID-19 Update from Dr. Michael McLoughlin

August 11, 2020

Over the last couple of days, we’ve seen what looks like the start of an increase in cases in Wright County, which have largely been in the Belmond area. More on this to come, but we haven’t been able to get the number of local cases down from what we were seeing in early July.

To put the current level of cases in perspective – let’s make an assumption that there are 5 undetected positive cases for everyone we know about, which is a pretty reasonable guess for a disease in which many people can have mild or asymptomatic infections. If that is accurate, the current level of cases means that in a random group of 25 citizens of Wright County there is about a 1 in 4 chance that at least one of them is infectious from COVID-19. Now some of those potentially infectious people have been quarantined, so the risk isn’t going to be quite that high, but it’s easy to see the implications this has for schools.

We all want kids to be back in school for both the kids’ and parents’ sake, but if we can’t improve this situation we’re putting a lot of faith in the protective equipment and other changes schools are making to prevent an increase in cases through the county and put people we care about at risk. I’d encourage everyone to keep this in mind over the next couple of weeks. Every case we prevent now has an exponential effect a couple weeks from now.

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