CNMI seeing rapid increase in case numbers

After seeing a downward trend in the number of COVID-19 cases last month, as of late January the CNMI has started to see a rapid increase in case numbers again.

During a virtual press briefing with the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. last week, Stephanie Kern-Allely, regional communicable disease epidemiologist for the Pacific Island Health Officers Association, shared that the CNMI started to see a steady, rapid increase in its number of COVID-19 cases starting last week.

“Our general overall trend from when we first identified COVID-19 in the community back in October 2021 [is that] we saw a rise in cases toward the end of November up to December and that has been trending down for some time. But in the last week or so, there’s been a steady, rapid increase in case numbers,” she said.

In the past week alone, the number of positive cases in the CNMI per day has surpassed the previous highest it had ever seen back in December, which was 200 cases per day, Kern-Allely said.

“We have reported over 200. It eclipses the number of cases that we’ve reported in a single day since the start of this community outbreak so we’re seeing a rapid increase in cases,” she said.

Tthe CNMI has also seen a rise in daily admissions compared to the previous surge of COVID-19 cases back in December. As of late January, the CNMI has had about three admissions a day, she said. Previously, the CNMI had only seen about two admissions a week.

“As our cases rise, we expect to see those hospitalization admission count to also rise in the coming weeks,” she said.

Over the weekend, the CNMI saw over 200 positive cases per day, indicating that the anticipated surge in COVID-19 has already begun.

According to a previous Saipan Tribune article, a combined 577 new cases of COVID-19 were reported in the CNMI based on three separate news reports from the CHCC that were issued late last Thursday night, Friday, and Saturday, bringing the CNMI’s total to 5,891 since March 26, 2020.

A CHCC report on Thursday night said that 261 individuals had been confirmed positive for COVID-19, all of them identified on Feb. 2, 2022.

On Friday, 112 additional cases that were identified on Feb. 2, 2022.

On Saturday, CHCC issued another news release, saying 204 new cases were added to the CNMI’s total.