With COVID-19 continuing to spread in Idaho, Gov. Brad Little on Tuesday said he’ll hold a news conference on Friday to announce “next steps” after his Oct. 26 move to shift the state back to Stage 3 of reopening.
“Most of you, if not all of you, are aware of the magnitude of the problem that we have,” Little said on a statewide call-in with AARP of Idaho. “We have way too many health care workers that either have been sick or exposed to COVID just because of the viral loading in their communities. We’ve got quite a ways to go yet.”
Dave Jeppesen, director of the Idaho Department of Health & Welfare, said, “Our cases across the country are up and that’s certainly the case in Idaho, at levels that are concerning. … We’ve seen multiple days in the last week and a half of over a thousand cases per day across the state.”
The virus is “very widespread” in Idaho now, Jeppesen said; every county has reported at least 10 cases per 100,000 residents. Residents of long-term care facilities have particularly been suffering, he said. As of mid-day Tuesday, 324 of the 698 deaths reported statewide were at long-term care facilities.
Jeppesen said as of Tuesday, 147 of the state’s 400 long-term care facilities had at least one case, “and that is the highest we’ve seen throughout the pandemic.”