Nevada Coronavirus Task Force Director Caleb Cage said Friday his team will have all eyes on the data as all but one Nevada county reopens Saturday.
Washoe is the exception because authorities still haven’t approved its reopening plan.
Cage said he really doesn’t expect to see much change in the numbers over the next two weeks because that’s the incubation period of the virus.
“It may be longer than two weeks before we start to see anything,” he said. But Cage said they expect that as mitigation measures are relaxed, case rates will rise.
He said they will be watching for changes in the daily cases, test positivity, hospitalizations and other factors. If there are increases, he said they’ll be looking at what part of the population is impacted by the spread and how often infection translates into an acute case.
Karissa Loper, who manages the statewide vaccination effort, said as of Friday, 1,967,016 doses of vaccine have been injected into people’s arms. She said that means 45 percent of Nevadans have gotten at least one shot and 32 percent are completely vaccinated.
Cage said the positivity rate has been steady at 5.7 percent all week. Hospitalizations are also fairly static at 333 as of Friday.
Asked how to protect hospitality workers as more tourists arrive, Cage pointed out that Nevada is one of the few states to prioritize hospitality workers for vaccination.
Carson City, Churchill and Lyon counties are the only counties in Nevada flagged for elevated risk of transmission but positivity rates in both the capital and Churchill have fallen below double digits over the week, finishing Friday at 8.4 percent. Only Lyon remains above 10 percent.
Nevada has recorded 315,438 cases of the virus — 10 percent of the population — and 5,464 deaths.
