The COVID-19 pandemic appears to be far from over, but things have certainly gotten better in North Idaho and Shoshone County since the massive spike in cases they saw in the last 2-3 months.

According to the Panhandle Health District, Shoshone County has only seven of the 323 active cases in the five northern counties.

In addition to low active numbers, Shoshone Medical Center's Dr. David Lawhorn states that SMC has not reported a new positive COVID test in over two weeks.

"It's nice that things are sort-of opening up a little bit with a little less anxiety and people are still wearing masks, as they should, but it is kind of nice from a psychological standpoint," he said.

Shoshone County, along with the rest of the panhandle, saw a huge spike in both confirmed cases and COVID related deaths from June to August — largely affecting senior and nursing home populations.

All three of the Silver Valley nursing facilities – Mountain Valley of Cascadia, Good Samaritan Society and Pacifica Living Center – unfortunately had to deal with COVID outbreaks in some form. Cascadia was hit the hardest of the three and saw a total of 80 confirmed cases and 11 COVID related deaths.

With the spike in the rearview mirror, nursing homes can finally take a breath.

"It doesn't mean that those at the nursing homes are home free, but we've gone over a giant hurdle," Lawhorn said.

Over at Good Samaritan, the facility recently received its very own rapid-result COVID tester.

Good Samaritan administrator Michael Neubauer explains that the BD Veritor System for Rapid Detection is a portable device that can deliver COVID results in 15 minutes.

"It's a flu-swab type of test. It's not what they call 'the brain tickler,'" he said.

The Centers for Medicaid/Medicare Services currently rate the county's positivity risk level as "Yellow." This rating is based on the percentage of positive tests that come out of one area.

Because of the Yellow rating, Good Sam must currently test all their staff weekly. With the addition of the rapid-result COVID tester, this task has been conducted in-house (and with zero positive cases).

"So far so good in our building," Neubauer said. "It's been fabulous to have this little machine and not overwhelm SMC. They did such a good job helping us and it's nice to take a little weight off of them.

Neubauer hopes that those in the community continue to wear masks and do their part to decrease the positivity rate.

Looking forward, Dr. Lawhorn is optimistic that COVID shouldn't come back in full-force like it did in the previous months.

"I expect that there may be a few more smaller pops in cases that appear between now and the end of the year," he said. "These pops would be much smaller and likely very isolated — not the big community spread that we saw."