Happy Easter: No new COVID cases

The Easter bunny delivered another day without a new COVID-19 case in Idaho’s five northern counties.

According to Panhandle Health District, Kootenai County has 44 confirmed cases and Bonner County has four. Shoshone, Benewah and Boundary counties haven’t confirmed a single case.

Here are the latest statistics for the five counties, as of noon Sunday, from PHD:

Confirmed cases: 48

No longer monitored: 24*

Hospitalizations: 5

*We won’t use the term “recovered” as that could be misleading because we don’t know if a person can contract COVID-19 more than once. We prefer to use the term “no longer monitoring,” a Panhandle Health representative said.

A person is no longer being monitored when they have stayed home for our recommended period of time AND have not had a fever for at least 72 hours (that is three full days of no fever without the use medicine that reduces fevers) AND other symptoms have improved (for example, when your cough or shortness of breath have improved) AND at least 7 days have passed since your symptoms first appeared

Hospitalizations is a tally of total hospitalizations of confirmed cases. This does not mean these patients are currently hospitalized, only that they were hospitalized for COVID-19 and are also confirmed positive with COVID-19.