Clark County’s COVID-19 positivity rate rises for second straight day

Clark County on Wednesday added 359 new coronavirus cases and eight deaths as the test positivity rate jumped for a second straight day.

Updated figures posted by the Southern Nevada Health District pushed totals to the county to 336,228 cases and 6,044 deaths.

New cases were above the two-week moving average of 330 per day. The longer term rate declined for a second straight day, dipping from 335 on Tuesday. The two-week moving average of daily fatalities in the county was unchanged at three.

The number of people hospitalized with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19 in the county increased by 21, to 537, according to data from the state Department of Health and Human Services.

The county’s 14-day test positivity rate, which tracks the percentage of people tested for COVID-19 who are found to be infected, increased 0.2 percentage point to 6.3 percent. That matched the increase reported on Tuesday and pushed the rate a half percentage point higher than its recent low of 5.8 percent on Nov. 1.

After falling fairly steadily since mid- to late August, new cases and the positivity rate have ticked higher since the beginning of November, a development that could indicate the county is in the early stages of another surge of the disease.

Ellie Graeden, a consultant to the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services and CEO of Talus Analytics, said at a news briefing Wednesday that the recent increase in new cases isn’t unique to Southern Nevada.

“We are seeing those sorts of upticks across the U.S. as well and globally,” she said. “The big deal here is that as we move indoors for the winter, we often do see an uptick of influenza-like illnesses or these types of coronaviruses that spread between people indoors, and this is part of the reason that we still encourage masks inside and the other mitigation measures that have been so effective in the past.”

Speaking earlier at a different briefing, Dr. Fermin Leguen, health officer of the Southern Nevada Health District, said local health officials are monitoring the situation.

Data guide: COVID-19’s impact on Nevada

The state, meanwhile, reported 582 new COVID-19 cases and 19 deaths during the preceding day. That brought totals posted for the Silver State to 446,461 cases and 7,797 deaths.

Nevada’s 14-day moving average of new cases decreased to 502 per day from 509 on Tuesday. The two-week average for fatalities rose to six per day, up from five on Tuesday.

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.

Of the state’s other closely watched metrics, the state’s two-week test positivity rate increased 0.1 percentage point to 7.1 percent, while the number of people in Nevada hospitalized with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 cases rose to 717, 14 more than on Tuesday.

As of Wednesday’s report, state data show that 56.60 percent of Nevadans 12 and older had been fully vaccinated, compared with 55.87 percent in Clark County. That number fluctuates widely throughout the state.

Washoe County has the state’s highest vaccination rate, at 65.63 percent, while Storey County has the lowest at 20.09 percent.

Contact Jonah Dylan at jdylan@reviewjournal.com. Follow @TheJonahDylan on Twitter. Review-Journal staff writer Mary Hynes contributed to this report.