{"id":363871,"date":"2022-03-10T06:01:25","date_gmt":"2022-03-09T20:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=363871"},"modified":"2022-03-10T06:01:25","modified_gmt":"2022-03-09T20:01:25","slug":"cnmi-at-high-transmission-but-numbers-are-going-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/cnmi-at-high-transmission-but-numbers-are-going-down\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018CNMI at high transmission but numbers are going down\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the CNMI in the middle of a surge in COVID-19 infections arising from the omicron variant, the Commonwealth currently falls under the high category of the U.S Center for Disease Control and Prevention\u2019s COVID-19 community levels. <\/p>\n

During a virtual press briefing with the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. last week, Stephanie Kern-Allely, regional communicable disease epidemiologist for the Pacific Island Health Officers Association, said this is where the CNMI is at based on COVID-19 data from March 1. <\/p>\n

Kern-Allely said the CDC has released new COVID-19 guidelines, including metrics to measure COVID-19 community levels. The three new metrics used to measure COVID-19 community levels include: new COVID cases per 100,000 people in the last seven days, new COVID admissions per 100,000 people, and the percent of inpatient beds occupied by COVID-19 patients. <\/p>\n

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Kern-Allely<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Although the CNMI is considered low on two of these three metrics, because of the consistent high number of daily cases, the CNMI falls under the high category. <\/p>\n

\u201cOur current COVID-19 community level in the CNMI, with data up to March 1, is high. Although two of our three are sort of close to that lower, medium mark, we still have really high rates of COVID-19 here in the community and we\u2019re also seeing cases on Tinian [and] Rota, which we didn\u2019t see with the delta surge back in December. So, until that overall transmission number comes down a little bit further, we\u2019ll still be in this high category,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Fortunately, despite the current high transmission rate, the CNMI is slowly starting to see a decline in the number of daily cases. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s been declining in recent weeks, which is great, great news. Thanks to folks getting their booster shots. We haven\u2019t seen this since the end of November. Now with the numbers coming down, I\u2019m hopeful that the trend will continue,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

In terms of daily COVID-19 admissions, Kern-Allely said the CNMI has been fairly stable. \u201cIn the last couple of days, our hospitalizations and our admissions have been fairly stable, which is a testament to the high vaccination coverage,\u201d Kern-Allely said. <\/p>\n

As for the third metric\u2014percentage of inpatient beds occupied by COVID-19 patients\u2014the CNMI is hovering at around 12% to about 10%, which is around the mdium category. <\/p>\n

Overall, because the CNMI is still experiencing pretty high transmission rates, CHCC is encouraging everyone to avail of the free testing that is offered to ensure that the spread can be controlled. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been seeing a reduction in testing over the past couple weeks. I would encourage folks to access testing. We want to make sure that we\u2019re keeping our friends and family safe. Make sure that you\u2019re not positive and you\u2019re not transmitting it to anybody that you might be seeing. I just want to encourage folks to continue to get tested,\u201d Kern-Allely said. (Kimberly B. Esmores)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the CNMI in the middle of a surge in COVID-19 infections arising from the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":363872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-363871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}