Southern Indiana health expert says current COVID-19 testing activity, hospitalizations are 'pretty low'

JEFFERSONVILLE, Ind. (WDRB) -- A southern Indiana health care leader said the demand for COVID-19 testing has significantly slowed down.

Clark County Health Officer Dr. Eric Yazel said that's become apparent at the county's health department test site.

"We're seeing — pretty consistently — less than 20 (people) per day now, and I mean we used to max out, 250 (people per day), things like that," he said.

Yazel believes at-home test kits could be one factor keeping some people away from the public test sites.

"The home testing is wonderful for a convince and accessibility and health equity side of things, but it does pose a challenge as far as being able to have solid epidemiology numbers and things like that," he said.

Because of the potential for people to not report positive test results from at-home tests, Yazel said he thinks current case numbers appear lower than they actually are. However, he said the good news is hospitalizations are much lower than they have been in previous months of the pandemic.

"The main part of this — a lot of times — is critical illness," Yazel said. "So we are watching our hospitalizations and ICU usages and we aren't seeing a climb there."

According to a Norton Healthcare spokesperson, as of Wednesday this week, Norton locations had 10 people hospitalized with COVID-19, including one person on a ventilator. That spokesperson said none of those 10 patients originally came to the hospital because of COVID-19, and instead, it was an "incidental finding."

In southern Indiana, Yazel is hopeful case numbers and hospitalizations will remain low.

"In the emergency departments, we're not seeing a significant amount of positive cases or critically ill patients or anything like that," he said. "So overall I'd say activity is pretty low still."

According to Norton Healthcare, it will still likely be another week before data from spring break cases is fully revealed.