There is more evidence that the curve is beginning to flatten in Washoe County. During the seven days between April 21 and April 27, the county saw a few days where COVID-19 recoveries outnumbered new cases. Still, the active cases rise slightly. During that span, there were 136 new cases, 83 recoveries and 10 deaths. That kept the active case growth to 23.

"It's always great to see the recoveries occurring but we really need to have consistently lower numbers of new cases and higher numbers of recoveries happening," Kevin Dick, Washoe County Health District Officer said.

The most new cases came on Saturday, with 36 new cases.

"Fortunately, we've seen numbers decline to 13 yesterday and 16 that we're reporting today," Dick said. "So hopefully we will continue with those lower numbers but we all need to be vigilant."

Dick says the spike might be a result of more people leaving the house, including large gatherings on Easter.

"We do know from our case investigations that we do have a number of cases when they were participating in a number of family gatherings that occurred for the holiday," Dick said.

"We've actually seen a lot of our recent cases had interactions with people outside their households," Heather Kerwin, Manager of Epidemiology for the Washoe County Health District said. "Especially, during Easter weekend."

The first confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Washoe County came more than seven weeks ago. As of Monday, 820 people have contracted the disease. 514 cases are active, 278 have recovered and 28 have died. When people test positive for coronavirus, an investigation begins. Kerwin says the health district tries to find out who the person was in contact with and where the person was before they caught the virus, and after they were infected. She says most patients have been in contact with three to 20 people. Nationally and globally, each person infects an average of 2.5 people.

"Here locally, we are actually seeing it about 1.8, so either way you slice that, about two or three people are going to become cases after contact," Kerwin said.

Kerwin says many people are letting their guards down. She said the number of contacts was fairly low during the early days of the stay-at-home order. Since then, people have been more willing to venture out. Especially, as the weather warms up.

"Nationwide, we've relaxed ourselves a little bit and that's going to result in an uptick in cases, even with the stay-at-home orders," Kerwin said.

People are still encouraged to stay home unless they have an essential reason to leave.

Dick says the Nevada State Laboratory has the capacity to test about 500 people each day. About 156 got tested, Monday. The state's directive is to only test people with symptoms. Dick says those symptoms could get confused with allergies. With available testing capacity, he says it might be a good idea for some people with allergies to get tested.

"If your allergies seem worse than normal as we go through this season or if you seem to be allergic now and haven't been in the past, that may be a sign that you have COVID-19," Dick said.

The state lab is also evaluating the Abbott antibody tests. Kerwin says there are about 90 antibody tests on the market but that only five or six are FDA-approved. Some antibody tests will recognize other types of coronavirus resistance, including four seasonal viruses, including those that cause the common cold.

"A lot of those antibody tests are not specific to the novel coronavirus, that they might actually show someone's got immunity but it's not immunity from the novel one," Kerwin said.

The Nevada State Laboratory hopes to begin conducting the tests in the coming weeks.

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