As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, the Fishers Health Department says we have seen an increase in COVID cases locally.  The department says after 6 consecutive weeks of decline, the past two weeks have seen an increase.

The Hamilton county unique individual positivity rate went up from 9.9% last week to 13.2% this week.

The case incidence rate, which is a 14-day rolling average of cases per 100,000 population, is up for a second straight week – 21.2% last week to 30.07% this week.  Fishers Health Department Epidemiologist Josh Robinson says over the 2-week period, the case incidence rate is up by a whopping 82%.

According to Robinson, Intensive Care Unit (ICU) availability has been going down in our local arear.  The availability rate is now at about 21%…it had been closer to 30% previously.

There was one piece of good news – the Fishers testing site has seen a decrease in positive cases from 13.38% to 10.23% over the past week.

Among those in Fishers age 18 and older, 85% have at least one COVID vaccine dose.  Even with that high vaccination rate Robinson says “there still remains a large number or residents in our community that have not yet initiated the vaccination process.”

Robinson encourages all eligible Fishers residents to get the vaccine.  “The case rates in unvaccinated residents is five times higher than the case rates in vaccinated residents” said Robinson.

Below is this week’s entire video message from Josh Robinson.