OKC Sees Downward Trend In New COVID-19 Cases Compared To Statewide Tally

Oklahoma again reported a more than 400 case increase in positive COVID-19 tests Thursday.

However, Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt said local numbers are much better.

“Here in the last five days, we’ve been in a downward trajectory here in Oklahoma City. What you have seen statewide, our numbers spiking in Tulsa and a couple other places,” Holt said Thursday morning.

Holt said he is cautiously optimistic.

“We are still on edge, but it is encouraging,” Holt said.

One number that is not going down in the Oklahoma City area is the number of hospitalizations.

“We’ve seen steadily increasing numbers of admissions,” INTEGRIS Director of Infection Prevention Dr. David Chansolme said. “We have a number of people on ventilators and we are actually at a higher census now than we’ve ever been across the INTEGRIS system.”

He said the patients he is seeing are younger than earlier spikes. He said he’s hopeful younger patients combined with new resources, like convalescent plasma and Remdesivir, will keep the number of deaths low, even as hospitalizations continue to increase.

“We have some tools in our toolbox that we did not have in March and April,” Chansolme said.

Before Thursday, three people had died across the metro in the past three weeks. On Thursday, alone, the Oklahoma State Health Department reported three new deaths in Oklahoma County.

Related: 438 More Oklahomans Test Positive For Coronavirus; 3 New Virus-Related Deaths Reported, OSDH Says

“Just because it’s not going crazy in Oklahoma City today, and I would argue that it’s spreading more rapidly than it was three to four weeks ago, which is what we expected,” Chansolme said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if all of the sudden we had a pocket break loose somewhere in the city.”

Both Chansolme and Holt stressed the only way to keep those outbreaks from occurring is for people to wash their hands, social distance, avoid big crowds and wear a mask.