Time to return to ‘normal’ life?

'It's OK to do just about anything — with caveats, to be sure.' — Dr. Drew Colfax

With the daily rate of new Covid-19 cases in Mendocino County settling well below 10 this week, Ukiah emergency room physician Dr. Drew Colfax said it’s time for many of us to start doing many things we haven’t done since the start of the pandemic.

“At this point, I think it’s OK to do just about anything — with caveats, to be sure,” said Colfax, speaking earlier this week during his latest Local Coronavirus Update, which is broadcast twice a month on Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, KZYX&Z.

For example, people with serious health issues such as a weakened immune system, or people just very concerned about not catching Covid, would be advised to continue employing most, if not all, of the precautions they have adopted the past two years, added Colfax, explaining that he will certainly be continuing to wear a mask indoors, and on airplanes for “quite some time,” even though he expects masks to no longer be required on planes soon.

“But with our numbers so low, four cases per 100,000, attending dinners or family gatherings with 15 to 20 people, even indoors, sitting around the table, unmasked — that’s fine now, it really is,” he said.

However, he did note that cashiers, for instance, whom he described as being “exposed to many unmasked people all day,” may want to consider continuing to wear a mask, and supervisors at such facilities may want to consider requiring masks to protect their staff.

As for the rates of hospitalizations in Mendocino County, Colfax, who works in the emergency room at Adventist Health Ukiah Valley, said “hospitalizations remain quite low indeed. Covid has become a quite manageable disease in the ER and hospitals in general.”

As of Thursday, April 7, Mendocino County Public Health officials reported that there had been 13,087 total cases of Covid-19 confirmed in the county, and that the average daily case rate was 3.6 per 100,000.

Also on April 7, another death from the virus was reported, for a total of 120. No further details were provided about the deceased patient.

Last week, Mendocino County Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren reported that the county had updated its Covid data dashboard, and in doing so had reduced the number of confirmed deaths from 125 to 119.

With the latest death, the number of confirmed deaths in the county reported in one section of the website, titled “Cases & Deaths (Overall), the number of confirmed deaths as of 4/7 was reported as 120.

However, in the section of the website titled “Cases & Deaths (More Details),” the number of deaths is listed as 122 “confirmed,” and three “probable.”