If you are looking for good news in the  weekly Fishers Health Department COVID report, you can get an appointment at the Fishers COVID testing site the same day or the following day, and a couple of measures have not become worse over the previous week.  There has been a decrease in the Fishers COVID testing site positivity rate, now at 5.23.  That’s about it for the good news.

In his weekly video update, Epidemiologist Joshua Robinson  says the Hamilton County unique individual positivity rate is at 12.0, red, the highest rating.  The case incidence rate up to 33.53, also red.

The community risk rating level remains at Level 3, with  being the highest risk rating .

According to Robinson, there continues to be a high demand for testing at the Fishers site located in the municipal complex near City Hall.

There is an increase testing demand locally, so Fishers is increasing testing hours.  This week, on Wednesday and Friday, testing hours will be 9am-3pm.  Thursday this week, testing hours will be  1pm-7pm.  Starting next week, the Fishers COVID testing site will be available Monday, Wednesday and Friday,  9am-4pm…then, next week, hours  on Tuesday and Thursday will be  noon-7pm.

Hospital & health care system capacity in our local Fishers area has seen a decrease in hospital capacity and an increase in daily hospitalizations, mainly among those unvaccinated.  “With the trend it is likely that those individual metrics, while they are in yellow (Level 2 on a scale of 4) this week, may move up to orange (Level 3) next week,” Robinson said.

Robinson estimates roughly 17,300 individuals in the Fishers community that are eligible for the vaccine based on their age but have not initiated the vaccine process.  Also, children under 12 are not eligible “likely will not be eligible for a few months.”

Robinson said the current data show case specific rates per 1,000 people are 11 times higher in the unvaccinated resident group compared to the those fully vaccinated.   August 13-19, the rate of new cases in vaccinated people per 1,000 was a 0.7…the unvaccinated rate was at 7.37.

“We are starting to see cases continue to increase and concentrate in unvaccinated individuals and in children,” Robinson said in his video message.  “The best way to protect individuals who are immunocompromised or who are not eligible for the vaccine is we all come together and do our part and receive the vaccine itself.”

In most situations, Robinson recommends wearing a mask in a public place where one is unsure how many people are unvaccinated.

“Cases are continuing to increase week over week here, locally within Hamilton County, all across the state, and there is no indication that the rate of increase has peaked or is even flattening,” according to Robinson.  “We should anticipate that we will continue to see an increase in cases, and our best path forward to mitigate the number of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths that we see is if we all do our part coming together to receive the vaccine.”

You can view Joshua Robinson’s entire video message, posted late in the day August 24th, at the link below.