Latah County ends COVID-19 emergency

The Latah County Commissioners on Wednesday ended the county’s COVID-19 emergency declaration that had been in place since March 2020.

This decision comes days before Idaho Gov. Brad Little is expected to lift the statewide public health disaster emergency declaration Friday.

Commissioner Tom Lamar said the county has the support of Idaho Public Health to end the emergency declaration. He said Latah County has averaged six COVID-19 cases per week since the middle of March, which is the lowest average the county has seen since July 2020.

Lamar assured that the county is continuing to review the data.

“Just because we’re removing this declaration doesn’t mean we’re going to stop monitoring the situation,” he said.

Lamar said he heard from Moscow officials last week that the BA.2 variant of COVID-19 has been found in wastewater samples, but the overall case numbers are low.

“We’re definitely moving in the right direction,” he said.

Lamar said the emergency declaration allowed the county to coordinate emergency activities with FEMA. He said ending it does not eliminate the county’s ability to make certain decisions if needed, such as requiring masks in the county courthouse.

Commissioner Dave McGraw said Latah County had lower infection and death rates than several surrounding counties. He labeled the pandemic as the signature issue of his time as commissioner and said the county made the best decisions it could with the tools it had.

“I think we handled the pandemic the best we could,” he said.

Gritman Medical Center announced Tuesday that it ended operations at its COVID-19 drive-through testing site and moved testing operations into the hospital and clinic system.

The hospital will continue to monitor COVID-19 positivity rates and may make changes to these protocols to be in line with federal requirements and to best accommodate the situation in the community. The COVID-19 care unit will also continue to treat patients for coronavirus-related care as is necessary.

Kuipers can be reached at akuipers@dnews.com.