Imperial County Public Health updates on COVID-19, monkeypox, and flu

IMPERIAL COUNTY — The Imperial County Public Health Department held a virtual General Community Update on Thursday, February 16 to share information regarding Covid-19, monkeypox, and influenza (flu) in the region.

During the virtual presentation, Public Health Department Director Janette Angulo, was joined by Dr. Steven Munday, Imperial County Health Officer.

Angulo started with updates on cases and deaths related to COVID-19 in Imperial County.

“In Imperial County, they started decreasing (cases),” Angulo said.

“We saw the peak back in December 2022, both at the state and local level, and since then it’s been a downward trend,” Angulo said.

Imperial County has

9.7 cases per 100,000; this rate includes individuals in state or federal facilities, Angulo said.

“As far as deaths in Imperial County, we started to see a great decrease in deaths (since) back in March of 2022, and since then deaths have remained on the very low end,” she said. “We are glad for that.”

Angulo said Imperial County showed a low levels on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID-19 community levels tracker.

Angulo said that, at a local level, COVID-19 emergency declarations expire 30 days after the California declaration ends. In October 2022 the State of California announced that the COVID-19 State of Emergency would end on February 28, 2023, per the ICPHD virtual presentation.

In January 2023, the Executive Office of the President announced that the COVID-19 national emergency and public health emergency are set to expire on March 1 and April 11 of this year, respectively, but that the administration planned to extend the emergency declarations to May 11, 2023 and then end both on that date, per the ICPHD virtual presentation.

“Emergency declarations for us and government and other agencies – when these declarations are made – this grants different flexibilities to us to be able to serve our community in a much faster and better way,” Angulo said.

“These flexibilities include access to an array of resources from medication to vaccination and other resources, including testing,” Angulo said.

Angulo said that ICPHD has been working on a transition to ensure vaccination, treatment, testing, data reports, disease surveillance, education, and information.

Angulo said the County’s COVID-19 mobile testing bus will continue operation in Imperial County until March 3.

Dr. Munday presented updates on monkeypox, which showed 5,729 statewide cases and 6 cases in Imperial County, according to his presentation.

“We had a large outbreak across the nation that started last summer, kind of peaked in the late summer, and then started to drop in the transition to fall and continued to decline,” Munday said.

“It is not that is completely gone – we still are seeing a few cases here and there – and it’s not yet clear if this can potentially become an endemic disease in the United States,” Munday said.

He also presented flu updates and showed a weekly surveillance report by the CDC. The map shows California at a moderate level, and Munday said that flu cases are gradually declining.

“Vaccination is one of the most important things you can do to protect yourself,” Dr. Munday said.