Kane County health official optimistic in face of COVID-19 downward trend

With the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations continuing to be on the decline along with Kane County’s positivity rate, Kane County Health Department official Michael Isaacson is hopeful about the current situation.

“Most of our metrics are improving,” Isaacson, the Kane County Health Department assistant director of community health, said in speaking to area chamber of commerce organizations as part of a Zoom webinar Friday.

As of Feb. 15, Kane County’s seven-day positivity rate decreased was 5.8%, down from 11.6% on Feb. 5. The positivity rate is the percentage of people who test positive out of all the people tested in a given time period.

Hospitalizations in the West Suburban region (DuPage and Kane counties) decreased or remained stable for the past 10 days. The region is down to 156 total COVID-19 patients in the hospital, a decrease from 264 patients on Feb. 8.

As numbers continue to improve, Isaacson said residents will have to determine for themselves their risk factor.

“I think there’s going to be an even greater emphasis on each of us really assessing our risk, not only as individuals, but also as employers and employees looking to what we need to do to best protect ourselves and to protect those around us,” he said. “I’m excited to get back together and be with larger groups and not have to wear a mask all the time, but there’s still some simple things we can do to keep people safe.”

He said the state’s COVID-19 mitigation measures have helped control the spread of the virus.

“We’ve seen less peaks in terms of serious illness and death and a quicker drop off in many cases too,” he said.

With a downstate appellate court ruling that the state’s indoor mask requirement in schools has expired, Isaacson said he hopes school districts continue mitigation efforts.

“The school district best understands what’s happening on the ground to create a safe environment for their students,” he said. ”So we continue to be advocates for multiple tiers or multiple levels of mitigation – encouraging vaccines, wearing face coverings, distancing people appropriately, those are all things that we encourage. And we also know that every district has to make its own decisions about what’s possible.”

Isaacson would like to see more Kane County residents vaccinated for COVID-19. He noted that 65% of all county residents are fully vaccinated.

“That’s a good number,” he said. “We’re better than a lot of places in terms of our vaccine uptake. But that leaves 35% of people in our community who are not fully vaccinated, which is about 185,000 people. So even when we talk about good vaccination rates, there’s still a tremendous number of people who are at risk.”

And he stressed that vaccines offer the best protection against COVID-19.

“Even if people have had COVID themselves, we strongly encourage them to go and get vaccinated so that they have the best protection possible,” Isaacson said.