By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
Doniphan County health officials are seeing a recent spike in the number of positive COVID-19 cases.
Doniphan County reports 56 active cases.
County Health Director Sheryl Pierce says that the spike has been about the same on a week-to- week basis, but she also reminds everyone, those numbers are fluid as well, with people coming out of isolation from testing positive.
"We continue to spike with our numbers with COVID positives, each day, I know over the weekend we probably worked up 10 to 12 over the weekend, everyday we're probably getting that amount of positives," Pierce tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. "What you need to understand is, with those numbers we have people coming off of isolation everyday also."
Pierce says with the new five and five rule recommended by the CDC, which is five days in isolation and five days of masking up, the departments goal is to keep people educated about what they should be doing.
"With the new five and five CDC recommendations for isolation and quarantine, where it's the five days of isolation and then five days of masking up, we just really want to educate the public that you're still infectious for 10 days," Pierce says.
Pierce says they are only releasing people on the sixth day if they are symptom free and have no fever without the help of fever reducers, such as Tylenol or Ibuprofen.
Pierce says as the county sees this spike, the health departments message is the same as it has been for months now.
"Same old thing," Pierce says. "Get vaccinated, get what we're calling fully vaccinated, whatever status you are on your vaccination series, make sure you're keeping it current, like if you need that booster and it's been six months since your Moderna or Pfizer, then get the booster, and actually with Pfizer now it's five months."
Pierce says there have been no issues with distributing the vaccine as the health department continues hosting vaccine clinics every Wednesday, and also says as more individual doses become available the health department will explore giving the shot other days of the week.