Hoopa Valley Tribe sees spike in COVID-19 cases
About 900 tribal members vaccinated so far
While newly reported COVID-19 cases are on the decline in most of Humboldt County, the Hoopa Valley Tribe is seeing an uptick in its number of positive cases.
As of Friday afternoon, the K’ima:w Medical Center reported 39 active COVID-19 cases on the Hoopa Valley Reservation, bringing the total number of cases since the pandemic began to 203. Hoopa Office of Emergency Services Incident Commander Greg Moon said the four new cases reported Friday were the result of contact to known cases during a KIDE radio broadcast.
“These little spikes happen,” Hoopa Valley Tribal Chairman Byron Nelson said during a Wednesday KIDE broadcast. “Hopefully, this is not a big spike and goes up any more than where it is now, but it seems to be happening because of the … community becoming lax.”
About a year into the pandemic, Nelson said people might be getting tired of putting in place all the safety precautions, such as wearing masks, but it’s important to keep implementing them.
With a small community like Hoopa and numbers as high as they are, Nelson said case counts “can possibly double in a few days.”
The tribe is currently in Alert Level 4 of its alert system, indicating the highest risk for COVID-19 spread, which will be revisited on Monday, Moon said. The alert level imposes an 8 p.m. curfew, restricts business hours, and requires all nonessential businesses to close or allow workers to work remotely, among other things.
Klamath-Trinity Joint Unified School District Superintendent Jennifer Glueck said the school district was intending to offer the option of inperson learning in staggered small groups, but is currently doing distance learning and stopped oneon-one appointments for most students.
“We have the infrastructure ready for when the conditions change because even when there are zero cases or we’re at a Level 2, we’re going to follow all of those distancing guidelines,” Glueck said.
The medical center recorded peaks of positive cases in late summer and during the past winter with case counts continuing to rise, according to data released Wednesday by the medical center.
“Looking at the current caseloads that we’re dealing with, it’s the gathering,” Hoopa Valley Tribal Public Health Representative Dr. Eva Smith said during a Wednesday KIDE radio broadcast. ” … That’s the main contributor of what we’re currently dealing with.”
Since April, 71% of positive
COVID-19 cases occurred in people younger than 40 years of age and just 8% in people older than 61, according to the data. The 11-20 age bracket had the largest proportion of cases at 22%, followed by the 2130 bracket at 17%, and the 0-10 and 31-40 brackets that each accounted for 16% of cases.
The vaccine is an important part of the strategy to beat the pandemic, Smith said, and about 900 tribal members have been vaccinated to date, closing in on getting a third of the population vaccinated.
“I still believe there are quite a few high-risk individuals that I’m hoping will reconsider,” Smith said.
Smith said the tribe received 200 doses in the past week and usually receives
an average of 100 per week.
“Because of some of the weather conditions,”
Smith said, “some of the transportation issues, we got what we expected last week plus we got this
week’s shipment.”