Gov. Little: COVID-19 Rates Dropping, Hospital Capacity Better

TWIN FALLS, Idaho (KLIX)-Gov. Brad Little said the COVID-19 incident rate in the Magic Valley and the state, with some exceptions, is getting better and is preparing a limited rollback of the current Stay Healthy Order.

During a press conference on the College of Southern Idaho campus, Gov. Little said he had talked with state medical experts on a modified rollback and not a complete shift to Statge-3, but more of a "Stage-2.5" in the coming days. He said locally, the Twin Falls and Jerome incident numbers are looking good and he was pleased with the way they were headed. "The hospitalization numbers, actually with exception of Kootenai County, we're doing pretty good, but I don't think we'd better get cocky about it because it could change pretty fast," said Little.

The governor said he met with the public health team who is concerned about the new strain of the virus. He said Idaho is expected to get 130,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine a month which isn't enough to have as much normalcy by June and July of this year, "I'd like to have 250,000 a month," said Gov. Little. The state currently doesn't have the capacity to distribute that much of the vaccine, but he is working towards that goal.

Just this week the governor said he will increase the number of Idaho National Guard members from 250 to 400 to help boost the distribution of the vaccine. He said what the Guard wants to do in conjunction with the local health districts is host mass vaccination clinics that would move across the state, the National Guard would play a key role in the logistics of that operation. Gov. Little noted the National Guard will take care of the weak links in areas that may be struggling to distribute the vaccine. "I don't think there's any question that I need to have enough people vaccinated so we can go back to normal," he said.