Covid cases not increasing or decreasing; hit a covid plateau

   Some experts said the country has hit a "covid plateau." The latest case numbers in Deschutes County support that thinking. Nationally, the numbers aren't significantly increasing or declining week to week. But there are still about 40,000 people hospitalized and 400 deaths a day. According to Deschutes County Health, covid case numbers in Central Oregon mirror that leveling off pattern. Deschutes County Covid Manager, Emily Horton, said, "it's not a significant increase or decrease. Just kind of, you know, pretty high numbers realistically as far as we've seen over the course of the pandemic. We're still seeing about 500 cases being reported to my team through the Oregon Health Authority per week, slightly over that. But they're not going up rapidly or increasing rapidly either." As for what to expect in the coming weeks the county points to a lot of variables. Kids going back to school and new variants make it difficult to predict whether cases will continue to plateau.