COVID-19 concerns amid the new year

Excerpted from abc57 news by Summer Horan

Holiday celebrations could mean a spike in cases.

Local health officials are now waiting to see where the numbers will be after Christmas and New Year’s.

“The data suggests that if people are going to develop symptoms it tends to be at 5-6 days following an exposure,” says Dr. Mark Fox, the Deputy Health Officer for the Saint Joseph County Health Department. “So that doesn’t mean if you have developed symptoms that you’re out of the woods cause obviously a lot of people can have an asymptomatic infection. But that’s also the right time frame for getting tested.”

If you do know someone who has tested positive, you are feeling symptoms, or had a concerning possible exposure from a holiday gathering the 5-7 day window after New Year’s is here and means you might need to get tested.

Check in on yourself and decide if you do need to go sign up for a test.

It’s when these symptoms start, like fatigue, a cough, shortness of breath, aches etc. that the COVID-19 tests available will be the most reliable.

“So you don’t have to, if you have symptoms, you don’t have to delay your testing,” says Dr. Fox. “The concern is about people who rush to get tested to early in the sequence so they may miss an infection that leads you to test negative early on but would have tested positive in the day 5 window.”

With the holidays, officials saw a huge decrease in testing which makes sense as most people enjoyed some time off, at home, with their families.
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