Saturday marks one year since Gov. Mike Parson announced a state of emergency in Missouri due to widespread coronavirus outbreaks and the doctor working closely with county health officials cautions now is not the time for letting your guard down.

Gasconade County had a “slight uptick” in new COVID-19 cases for the first time in almost two months, according to Dr. Michael Rothermich with Hermann Area District Hospital.  The county is reporting 15 new cases over the prior seven days.

“Certainly, this is nowhere near our previous highs — 141 new cases over 7 seven days,” Rothermich noted in his weekly report. “However, there may be reason for some concern, as our ‘PCR only 7-day Positivity Rate’ has increased for the second week in a row and is now up to 9 percent, suggesting we may back to a situation where we are not doing enough testing.”

The county’s rate had dropped to as low as 3 percent in recent weeks. 

“Given the increase in new diagnoses in our county and increase prevalence in the U.S. of variants of COVID that spread more readily, I would caution individuals, especially those unvaccinated, from letting their guard down, and recommend continued social distancing, mask use and avoiding high risk activities,” Rothermich said in is email to the media this week.

This bump in new cases comes as the One for All Missouri campaign announced 16.8 percent of Missourians have received at least once dose of a vaccine, and 9 percent have received their second dose. Missouri continues to vaccinate members of Phase 1A and Phase 1B, Tiers 1 and 2 and vaccinations for Missourians included in Phase 1B, Tier 3 are scheduled to be available beginning Monday, March 15 (see related story on page 3).

‘Please, do not call’ to register

Rothermich, on behalf of the county’s health department, asked that those seeking appointments for vaccinations to “please, do not call the hospital or clinics to sign up for a vaccination.”

Inquiries received will be directed to leave their contact information at an online registration link found at https://forms.gle/GnYpmh3QoKmXr4qW9 .

“Like all organizations, we are being overwhelmed with people asking about vaccination,” Rothermich said.

This week’s most important takeaway is make sure you have a working cellular or landline telephone number so you can receive confirmation calls about a scheduled appointment time.

Due to repeated and unsuccessful attempts to reach people who have signed up, after three missed calls you will be removed from the Gasconade County list and you will have to register again.

Tips for increasing your chance of being selected for a vaccine clinic:

• Be sure to give a good, working number, or numbers, where health officials are likely to reach you or a family member or caregiver during normal business hours.

• If you give a number for someone else in your family, they should have your permission to schedule an appointment for you.

“We have many people we call who do not answer,” according to Rothermich. “Each time we call, but do not reach you, we will leave a message, if there is voicemail or answering machine, noting that we have called to offer you a vaccine appointment. On our third failed attempt to reach you, we will leave a message that we will not be calling back. Your name will be removed from our list and you are invited to re-submit your information with a better way to reach you.”   

Also, health officials are specifically requesting that you not re-submit your name unless you are updating your information or tier or you have been missed on all three call attempts.

“We spend a lot of time maintaining this database and carefully review all submitted data,” said Rothermich. “Some people have submitted their names many times. When identical data is submitted, the oldest data entry is deleted. Within each tier and geographic region, we call the ‘oldest’ submitted contacts first. This results in people who frequently resubmit their data being continually moved to the end of the line.”