Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Ministry of Health reported on May 21 that the number of COVID-19 cases had decreased, and the number of hospitalizations had also dropped. However, the number of patients with COVID who are still in the hospital has increased.
By May 24, 2022, 661 people had died from COVID-19. The VDH has not reported any additional deaths since May 16.
Application deadline: May 15 to May 21, 2022
Community-wide community levels: High. The rate of new weekly COVID-19 cases per 100,000 Vermont residents is above 200 (case numbers are below). The number of new hospital admissions for COVID-19 is above 10 per 100,000 Vermontans per day, and the percentage of hospital beds with staff occupied by COVID-19 is below 10%.
• New cases of COVID-19, last 7 days: 286.38 per 100,000 (less than 371 last week)
• New admission of patients with COVID-19 to the hospital, last 7 days: 10.10 per 100,000, a total of 63 new admissions of patients with COVID-19 (down from 11.22 compared to last week).
• Percentage of hospital beds with staff occupied by patients with COVID-19 (7-day average): 6.12% (compared to 5.27 percent compared to last week).
Vermont Department of Health recommendations: Protect yourself and others
CDC Recommendations: COVID-19 by District CDC
The seven-day moving average of hospital patients admitted with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection peaked in January 2022 and increased again during April and early May. The number is the daily average of the previous seven days; for example, the value for May 8 is the daily average for the days of May 1 to 7.
Syndromic Surveillance
Vermont uses the Electronic Community Epidemic Early Warning System (ESSENCE), which provides all individual visits to participating emergency departments1 to identify COVID-like emergency (CLI) visits.
During this reporting period, between 5% and 6% of emergency visits to participating emergency departments included COVID-like illness.
Almost all specimens collected during the last few weeks were BA.2 substrates. (Sources: Broad; VGS Program of the Ministry of Health. Note: Due to weekly variability in the number of sampled sequences, the chart format has been changed to reflect the proportion, not the number, of variants.)
In addition to NVSS locations in Vermont, the City of Burlington collected samples in collaboration with the Department of Health and research partners at the University of Vermont and at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. Burlington has been collecting data since August 2020 and reports a 24-hour concentration of the virus (as genomes per liter) of SARS-CoV-2 ribonucleic acid (RNA) collected at three urban wastewater treatment plants.
Note: 4% of vaccinated persons lack information on race / ethnicity. Population denominators are from the 2019 population estimate, so the percentages of estimates that may vary from the right share of the population, especially for smaller groups, are shown. “Up-to-date” means that the person received all the recommended doses in his primary series of COVID-19 vaccines and one dose when he met the conditions.
COVID-19 vaccination rates for Vermont residents who identify themselves as Pacific Islanders or Indians, Indigenous or First Nation are significantly lower than rates for other Vermont residents. In addition, the number of people on the Vermont Immunization Registry who identify as Pacific Islanders or Indians, Indigenous, or First Nation is much less than the Vermont Department of Health’s population estimate. These findings may be due to one or more of the following:
1) Pacific Islanders and Indigenous / Indigenous Americans are less likely to report their race.
2) Pacific Islanders and Native Americans receive fewer vaccines.
3) Population estimates of the Ministry of Health overestimate the real population.
4) Providers collect race and ethnicity in a way that is inconsistent with the way people identify.
Reported and confirmed epidemics, active since May 23, 2022
1 All Vermont hospitals and two emergency care clinics are included in ESSENCE.
Source: VDH May 24, 2022 https://www.healthvermont.gov/covid-19/covid-19-activiti-and-surveillance
