Being endemic simply means that COVID-19 will continue to circulate in our community, just as influenza, strep, and other diseases do. As the virus mutates and new variants arise, we may see new waves of infections. However, we cannot predict when and how bad these new waves will be.

This also means that we will transition away from monitoring cases, including contact tracing efforts (except in vulnerable populations), to monitoring disease severity and societal impact. We will no longer report weekly data, but will alert the community when we become aware of a spike in COVID-19 cases.

Here are some immediate changes that you will see beginning in April:

• Shannon County Health Center COVID-19 reports will transition from weekly to monthly, or as needed

• Missouri Dashboard report frequency will decrease from daily to weekly

• State’s Case Data Publication of 7-day totals will only be published weekly

• Contact tracing will be conducted locally only for vulnerable populations. Instead, surveillance will be focused on disease severity and societal impact

• Vaccine, Testing & Therapeutics will continue as long as federal resources persist, but will shift to traditional health care delivery over time

If you would like to get COVID-19 numbers on a more frequent basis, you can find state and county data on the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services website at this link: https://health.mo.gov/…/novel…/data/public-health/ . There is also statistical reports on the CDC COVID Data Tracker at: CDC COVID Data Tracker: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home

We want to emphasize, this is not necessarily an end to the pandemic and does not minimize the importance of public health surveillance, investigation and response activities. It is another step in our recovery efforts and a hopeful transition to normalcy that we have all been waiting for. We will continue to keep an eye on key data and, if required, return to an emergency response state.