COVID-19 Update: July 16, 2021

Don’t expect lawmakers to come back to Boise to prevent employers from requiring vaccinations as a condition of employment. Idaho Senate Republicans announced Friday they would rather work out disagreements without passing new laws, at least for the time being. Last week, three of Idaho’s largest health care providers announced they would require all employees to get vaccinated by this fall. Idaho’s test positivity rate rose again last week, as did the statewide seven day moving average case rate and COVID-related hospitalizations and ICU admissions. While the numbers are still much lower than the highs Idaho saw in December, they follow nationwide trends of rising cases as the highly transmissible Delta variant spreads among mostly unvaccinated people. The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare has confirmed just nine cases of the Delta variant in Idaho so far. Currently, 51.7 percent of Idahoans ages 18 and older are at least partially vaccinated. Nationwide, that number is 68 percent.