MOLINE, Ill. — The Rock Island County Health Department joins forces with the Scott County Health Department to provide an update on how the COVID-19 pandemic is trending in the Quad Cities area.
On Wednesday, March 10, the Rock Island County Health Department noted "troubling trends" of new daily case numbers coming in at 20-plus per day. This comes two weeks after the county reported its lowest number since August.
Dr. Louis Katz with the Scott County Health Department said the uptick was "extremely worrisome, given rapid increases nationally and regionally" with the other variants that research shows can be more transmissible and could increase the fatality rate.
"There is a light at the end of the tunnel right now," he said, "but if we don't double down on the non-pharmaceutical interventions, that light's gonna turn out to be a train coming at us."
On Thursday, the health department announced that state-run COVID-19 testing had been cancelled for the remainder of March. Resources from those sites have been allocated to other counties.
Nita Ludwig with the Rock Island County Health Department said the testing sites were cancelled because of the recent low-turnout. At their peak, they were testing more than 400 people per day. Recently it has been fewer than 100 per day.
Ludwig said the cancellation is temporary and they can request testing sites to come back in the future.
Vaccination eligibility is growing as is vaccine allotment. In both Scott County and in Rock Island County, more than 14,000 people have been fully vaccinated.
