Dr. Colfax ends regular COVID-19 updates

With Covid-19 becoming a more and more ingrained facet of daily life, Mendocino County emergency room physician Dr. Drew Colfax said he is again pausing the regular coronavirus updates he has been giving on Mendocino County Public Broadcasting about twice a month for the past two years of the pandemic.

“I think there is not going to be a lot of unsettling Covid news until the fall, though it’s hard to predict,” Colfax said during his latest Local Coronavirus Update on KZYX&Z with Alicia Bales last week, explaining that he would be taking an “indeterminate leave from the show for now, as things can change. Coronavirus has fooled us many times.”

So far this month, Colfax said Covid-19 cases are back on the rise, though “this little bump we’ve been talking about is not nearly as bad as several of the other surges we’ve had. Locally, our cases are up above my threshold of 10 per 100,000 people, (as) we’re at 15 per 100,000 in Mendocino County. (But) the good news is that this surge isn’t really translating into a significant increase in mortality and morbidity.

“We are diagnosing people again with Covid,” said Colfax, who works in the ER at Adventist Health Ukiah Valley. “We hadn’t done that much at all in March, and the first week or two in April, but it’s back, but most people go home. In general, we haven’t had anybody hospitalized for Covid, so it’s not a significant burden on healthcare.”

When asked how safe it was to travel, particularly on an airplane, Colfax said he believes that, in general, “traveling is fine at this point, (although) airline travel has become a bit more dangerous because people are unmasked, so that becomes a bit more fraught. I would certainly encourage anyone traveling in an enclosed space with a few hundred other people to keep a mask on, it does help protect oneself, though not as well as if everybody is masked.”

Colfax closed his latest Local Coronavirus Update last week by thanking all the show’s listeners and especially the callers.

“I have appreciated in particular the calls from people with a different perspective than mine, that has kept (the show) lively and interesting,” he said. “And I hope I have educated, informed and entertained during this time.”