Another five Park County residents died from COVID-19 earlier this month, the Wyoming Department of Health announced Tuesday. The deaths included four men and one woman.

One was an older man who lived in a local long-term care facility, according to the department. The other four people who died were under the age of 65, while three had health conditions that put them at greater risk of severe illness, the department said.

There have now been 48 deaths among the more than 4,300 confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 that have been logged in Park County since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.

There were 212 confirmed and probable infections in the county that were considered active on Wednesday, up from 199 such cases a week earlier, according to state data.

The infections included 16 patients who were sick enough with COVID-19 to be hospitalized, the data indicated, with eight patients at Powell Valley Healthcare and eight more at Cody Regional Health.

That was one fewer patient than a week earlier and down from Saturday, when a new record of 20 COVID patients were being cared for between the Powell and Cody hospitals. The figures do not include local residents who are transferred to other hospitals.

In a Wednesday video message, Cody Regional Health ER Dr. Scott Polley encouraged residents to get vaccinated against the disease.

“... What we’re seeing here in Park County and Cody, Wyoming, is a massive influx of very sick COVID-19 patients,” Polley said.

While some of the people are fully vaccinated, “the vast majority of the sicker patients that we’re seeing — the ones that are coming in that are very hypoxic, gasping for air, short of breath, getting admitted, getting into the ICU — are unvaccinated,” he said.

Polley added that the surge is large enough that it’s causing problems for non-COVID patients.

“Everybody in Cody is going about their business, everybody in Powell is going about their business, and that’s good,” he said. “But right now if you get in a major car wreck, if you have a heart attack, there may be a struggle as to whether or not we can get you placed in a hospital here, in Billings, Idaho, anywhere around the Mountain West.”

Cody Regional Health has at times had to call a dozen hospitals in Wyoming, Montana, Utah and Colorado to find a bed, Polley said, while the Cody hospital fielded a call asking it to take a patient from as far off as Oklahoma.

He encouraged people to talk to their medical providers, research the vaccines and try to put aside the spin from both sides of the political aisle that has left people feeling alienated. 

While some people have been concerned about side effects from the vaccines, Dr. Polley said the chance of developing, say, a blood clot from a COVID vaccine is a fraction of the risk of getting a blood clot from COVID-19 itself.

“I think a lot of people are scared of the vaccine … when in reality they don’t think about the consequences of getting a bad COVID infection,” Polley said. “Most people that get COVID are going to do OK, but unfortunately there’s a fair number that don’t. … They can get really, really bad in a hurry; they can die. I’ve seen that unfortunately already too many times.”

Earlier this week, Park County Health Officer Dr. Aaron Billin shared a recent commentary published in the journal Cell that found the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been 94-98% effective in preventing severe disease from the novel coronavirus and its major variants.

As of Monday, 11,110 Park County residents were fully vaccinated, the Department of Health said in its weekly update, representing about 38% of the overall population. That’s just above the state average of 37.7%.

Across Wyoming, the deaths of 996 residents have been tied to COVID-19 among the nearly 90,000 cases logged since early 2020.