Theresa Nolan, Executive Director of Clinical Operations for UNLV Medicine, fills syringes with the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at UNLV, Monday, April 5, 2021.
Wednesday, July 28, 2021 | 4:37 p.m.
RENO — Northern Nevada's top health officer said Wednesday that the return to an indoor mask mandate in most of the state is an unwelcome but necessary move amid a spike in COVID-19 infections he blames on the 43% of eligible residents who have not gotten vaccinated.
Health officials reported 1,179 new coronavirus cases statewide Wednesday, their highest level since February.
“Our COVID-19 transmission is driven by our unvaccinated population,” Washoe County Health District Officer Kevin Dick told reporters in Reno.
He said he’s especially frustrated by those who argue the decision on whether to get vaccinated is a personal choice that should be left to an individual “because it only affects them.”
“That is false. Whether somebody is vaccinated or unvaccinated affects our community. It affects everybody’s risk of being infected,” Dick said Wednesday.
State health officials say 47% of residents 12 and older are fully vaccinated and about 57% have received at least one shot.
“It seems sad to me that when you look globally, we see so many people that are dying because they don’t have access to the COVID-19 vaccine,” Dick said. “Here in Washoe County, in our state, in our nation, we are seeing a resurgence of COVID-19 and people dying because the vaccine is available but they are refusing to get it.”
Gov. Steve Sisolak has issued an order effective at 12:01 a.m. Friday that requires masks indoors regardless of vaccination status in 12 of 17 counties, covering Las Vegas, Reno, Carson City and Elko. It followed an indoor masking recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for counties with high transmission rates.
Also effective Friday, masks will be required indoors for all students, employees and members of the public at higher education institutions statewide.
Health officials have attributed Nevada's surge since mid-May to the highly contagious delta variant and say most people who are hospitalized have not been inoculated against the virus.
Dick said “nobody welcomes moving back to requiring masks.”
“But I believe it is necessary because of what we know about the delta variant now,” he said. “We don’t want to be experiencing the surge that we did last fall. We don’t want to be having to further restrict business or our economy.”
Las Vegas and Clark County account for 89% of infections in the state. Sixteen of 20 newly reported deaths in what the Nevada Hospital Association termed the state's fourth wave of the pandemic were in the Las Vegas area.
“The increases in Nevada’s COVID-19 case count are entirely driven by activity in the southern part of the state,” the association said in a weekly report Wednesday. “Northern and rural areas are seeing very modest increases or remaining stable.”
Nevada’s two-week test positivity rate continued to climb from a low of 3.4% in mid-May to 14% statewide and 15.3% in the Las Vegas area as of Tuesday. The figure reflects the percentage of people tested and found to be infected and is used to measure community spread.
Nearly 1,100 COVID-19 patients were hospitalized in Clark County, or nearly 96% of those hospitalized in Nevada with confirmed or suspected cases of the virus. Officials have said hospitalizations are approaching peaks seen last summer.
Dick said Washoe County is faring better than the Las Vegas area but that the seven-day average of new cases in the northern county has tripled since July 1, from about 23 to about 69. While hospitalizations have remained stable there, he expects that to change in the coming weeks.
“If we want to continue to move forward, if we want our economy to prosper and our lives to get back to normal, the solution is to take advantage of the incredible vaccines that have been developed that are available to us,” he said.
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Associated Press reporter Ken Ritter contributed to this story from Las Vegas.
