Clark County COVID-19 cases, positivity rates continue to decline

Clark County on Tuesday reported 290 new coronavirus cases and 47 deaths, as most metrics continued recent steady declines.

The updates brought totals posted by the Southern Nevada Health District to 485,100 cases and 7,267 deaths.

New cases were well below the two-week average, which dropped from 529 on Monday to 460. The two-week moving average of daily deaths increased from seven to nine.

Gov. Steve Sisolak rescinded the state’s mask mandate last week as the omicron-driven surge receded quickly. The mandate had been tied to metrics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which are tracked using a seven-day average.

For a county to exit the state mask mandate for crowded indoor public spaces, it had to record back-to-back weeks with a seven-day average case rate under 50 per 100,000 residents and a seven-day test positivity rate below 8 percent — metrics considered as posing a “moderate” or “low” risk of transmission by the CDC.

Clark County’s numbers still were well above those markers on Tuesday morning. The seven-day test positivity rate was 13.71 percent Tuesday afternoon, more than five percentage points lower than last week. The case rate also dropped to 204.92.

The county briefly dipped below a case rate of 100 per 100,000 people in November before the surge caused numbers to skyrocket across the board. For weeks, though, the numbers have been dropping, in line with what public health officials had expected to see once the county hit the peak of the current surge.

Data guide: COVID-19’s impact on Nevada

The county’s 14-day test positivity rate, which tracks the number of people tested for COVID-19 who are found to be infected, decreased by 1.3 percentage points to 18.2 percent. The number of people hospitalized with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19 in the county increased by eight, to 687.

Meanwhile, the state reported 510 new cases and 59 deaths, bringing totals posted by the state Department of Health and Human Services to 640,579 cases and 9,421 deaths.

State and county health agencies often redistribute daily data after it is reported to better reflect the date of death or onset of symptoms, which is why the moving-average trend lines frequently differ from daily reports and are considered better indicators of the direction of the outbreak.

The state is sometimes delayed in reporting metrics from over the weekend, which is why Tuesday death numbers are sometimes significantly higher than those reported over the weekend.

Still, the two-week moving average of daily deaths increased from 10 to 12. That metric has not been dropping at the same rate as the others. New cases statewide were below the two-week moving average, which dropped from 862 on Monday to 739.

Of the state’s other closely watched metrics, the 14-day test positivity rate decreased 1.4 percentage point to 29.4 percent, while the number of people hospitalized with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 cases increased by three, to 865.

As of Tuesday, state data showed that 56.29 percent of Nevadans 5 or older had been fully vaccinated, compared with 55.68 percent in Clark County.

Contact Jonah Dylan at jdylan @reviewjournal.com. Follow @TheJonahDylan on Twitter.