Protecting those ‘at-risk’

First county COVID hospitalization prompts renewed focus on elderly

KELLOGG — Since the first official case was diagnosed on July 2, Shoshone County has seen its COVID-19 numbers increase at a fairly substantial rate.

As of Monday, the Panhandle Health District shows that the county is now at 27 total cases — 25 of which are currently active and being monitored.

Until recently, all of the cases have thankfully been either asymptomatic or not serious enough to require extended medical care. On Monday though, local health officials confirmed that a Wallace man in his 70s was taken to an Intensive Care Unit in Missoula, Mont., after suffering from severe COVID-19 symptoms.

While everyone should take the proper precautions to avoid the virus, regardless of age, it’s no secret that COVID-19 can be much more harmful to those in what medical professionals refer to as the “at-risk” category.

Dr. David Lawhorn with Shoshone Medical Center explains that this includes individuals such as the elderly and/or people with preexisting conditions.

“In regards to the ‘at-risk’ patients over the age of 60, the mortality rate is incredibly higher compared to the general rate. It’s still evolving too, I estimate it could be from 11% in the general older population to as high as 30% or higher in the nursing home population,” he said.

The statistics available seem to reinforce Dr. Lawhorn’s estimation.

According to a CDC table showing the distribution of deaths involving COVID-19 by age and by race (updated July 15), 97,459 of the 121,374 Americans who have died have been at or over the age of 65; that’s just over 80% of all the deaths in the country.

Back to Shoshone County, of the 27 confirmed cases, six have been either in their 60s or older.

With one of these elderly individuals becoming the county’s first hospitalized case, Dr. Lawhorn wishes to stress the importance of protecting people in that at-risk category.

“Now is absolutely the time for people to do everything they can to protect the nursing homes in the Silver Valley,” he said. “The largest concern and focus is protecting our local older population and nursing home residents.”

Examples of what COVID-19 can do to the population of a nursing home are numerous.

Reported by the Associated Press on Monday, 12 residents of Canyon Creek Memory Care in Billings, Mont., have died from the respiratory virus in the past two weeks.

Yellowstone County health officials said that the latest two victims of the virus were a woman in her 80s who died on Saturday and a man in his 80s who died Sunday at Canyon Creek.

The facility has lost one-fifth of its 59 residents since June 6.

These numbers could be concerning, considering that nearly one-fourth of Shoshone County’s population is made up of people 65 and older.

Dr. Lawhorn recommends that in addition to the standard precautions people should be taking, such as wearing a mask in public, practicing proper social distancing, and using sanitizers, they should also be extra mindful around those at-risk individuals.

As for the at-risk individuals themselves, Dr. Lawhorn stresses an extra importance of wearing a mask and avoiding mass gatherings.

For the latest COVID-19 statistics in North Idaho, visit https://panhandlehealthdistrict.org/covid-19/