Officials: COVID-19 may be as common as common cold

Area health officials believe COVID-19 will likely be treated similarly to diseases like the common cold and the flu now that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has relaxed its coronavirus guidelines.

Effective Aug. 11, the CDC dropped the recommendation that Americans quarantine themselves if they come into close contact with an infected person, according to the Associated Press. The decision comes more than two-and-a-half years after the start of the pandemic.

Jason Menchhofer, Mercer County Health District commissioner, said the relaxing of guidelines falls in line with health officials learning more about COVID-19.

"From what I've seen…the main rationale for that is because we've reached a point where a large enough percentage of the population has either been vaccinated or had prior COVID-19 infection that we're no longer seeing the severity that we did even probably a year ago in terms of hospitalization and from people dying from COVID," Menchhofer said.

According to the Ohio Department of Health's COVID Dashboard, 40.22% of Mercer County, or 16,561 people of all ages, are vaccinated. That's compared to 63.37% of Ohio's population, or more than 7.4 million Ohioans of all age groups.

Menchhofer said vaccines, rapid tests and treatments have largely affected the recovery rate.

"We're not seeing near as many cases that are severe enough that people end up in the hospital," Menchhofer said. "Not only do we have a larger percentage of the population who has either been vaccinated with infected, but we also have multiple actual treatments…which we didn't have back in 2020."

He also thinks COVID is on the path to be treated like the flu or the cold.

"We're headed in that direction because it's not as severe and we have multiple options to treat it if people get it," Menchhofer said of the trend. "I think we're moving in a direction where it'll be considered what we call endemic, which just means it's in the environment or it circulates in the population; it's just a normal thing, like the flu."

Auglaize County Health Department commissioner Oliver Fisher agreed.

"Given the saturation of the virus in the communities, I don't foresee it going away," he said of COVID's presence. "I think it will be something that will transition to more like a flu or cold-like status. Hopefully, as we move forward with the virus, the symptoms will become less severe. Even with the flu, you can still see hospitalizations, depending on a person's health factors that they may have."

Fisher also spelled out what the guidelines mean and how they impact daily life.

According to the CDC, people with a positive COVID-19 test, regardless of vaccination status, should isolate at home for at least five days. Isolation may be discontinued after day five if the person is fever-free for 24 hours and symptoms have improved.

After ending isolation, people should wear a mask in public and around others for the next five days. They may remove their mask sooner if they have two negative antigen tests in a row, 48 hours apart.

Additionally, people with a fever or symptoms that have not improved after five days of isolation should continue to stay home and isolate until symptoms have improved or resolved, per the CDC.

For people exposed to COVID-19, quarantine is no longer part of the recommended guidance. Instead, people with known exposure to COVID-19 should wear a mask when in public or around others for 10 days from the last exposure, watch for symptoms, take extra precautions around high-risk individuals who are more likely to become ill and consider getting tested for COVID-19 after 5 days from last exposure, the CDC states.
  In Auglaize County, officials saw a significant drop off in cases around February and March, Fisher said. Cases have been slowly increasing, but not to the degree officials saw in December or January.

"We are in that high community level, which is based on case counts, hospital bed admissions and staffing for hospital beds," he said. "I'm hoping though, in the next week or two, that will come down from that."

According to the ODH's COVID Dashboard, 41.11% of Auglaize County, or 18,770 people of all ages, are vaccinated.

Both Menchhofer and Fisher said normalcy is slowly making it's way into the area, but some changes are here to stay, such as working from home.

"You still see people wearing a mask in hospitals and doctors' offices, but largely we're back to normal and I think we're still heading in that direction," Menchhofer said. "It falls to the point that COVID is just something that we deal with like any other illness. Some people are going to get sick from it, and most of them are going to take medicine and get better. Some people might still die from it, but people died from the flu every year.

"There are going to be some things we've picked up through the course of this thing that might benefit us in the long run even for efficiency and convenience, not necessarily to curb the spread of disease. But I think we're well on our way back to normal."

Fisher offered a similar assessment.

"I think we'll get close to what used to be considered normal, but I still think there's going to have to be factors within that normalcy that we've changed slightly," Fisher said. "I hope that we'll get back close to that state of normal that we used to have, but I think we'll still have things that we have to take into account and consideration for safety."

As of Thursday, there have been 10,418 confirmed and probable cases, 663 hospitalizations, 144 deaths and 9,963 people presumed to be recovered in Mercer County, according to ODH's COVID-19 Dashboard.

In Auglaize County, there have been 12,759 confirmed and probable cases, 671 hospitalizations, 190 deaths and 12,225 people presumed be recovered.