Looking back on two years of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Sara Rubin here recalling when, on this day two years ago, Monterey County Health Officer Edward Moreno called a press conference to announce that two patients had tested positive for Covid-19, the first two confirmed cases locally. They were believed to have contracted the virus while traveling internationally.

Two years later, as of March 14, the Monterey County Health Department reports 78,540 cases of the virus have been detected, representing roughly 18 percent of the county’s population; 722 people have died from the virus.

The rate of new infections has slowed, but it hasn’t stopped. Also as of March 14, the county reported 467 new Covid cases, a rate of 7.5 cases per 100,000 people.

Doctors and public health officials never expected the virus to simply disappear, but have long had their eyes on the transition from pandemic to endemic. That’s the point at which the virus is just part of life – something perhaps resembling the flu, that comes with vaccinations, regular PSAs and a certain number of severe illnesses and deaths, but does not force the health care system into overdrive or stall society.

It’s hard to tell when endemic status might arrive, says Martha Blum, medical director for infection prevention for Montage Health, but she’s hopeful it is coming.

“We’ll probably realize it in the rearview mirror—it’s not going to be one magic indicator,” Blum says. “I don’t know that there’s going to be one specific day or time or event that we’ll say ‘aha, now we’ve achieved that.’ People sense that’s where we almost are. Many prevention measures have become optional, rather than mandatory. It’s coming. I, for one, am looking forward to a much more Covid-free spring and summer.”

Health officials estimate about 70-90 percent of the population needs to be immune to the virus to achieve herd immunity, which would take us to endemic status. Without vaccines yet available for children ages 0-4, and just 83 percent of Monterey County’s eligible population at least partially vaccinated, we haven’t hit that threshold yet.

But there is research underway to figure out how close we are. CalScope is a study being conducted by the California Department of Public Health in seven counties, including Monterey. (The others are Alameda, El Dorado, Kern, Los Angeles, San Diego and Shasta.) The study is using blood samples collected via finger prick to look at who has antibodies from a previous Covid-19 infection or vaccination.

Some 200,000 invitations went to households in those counties starting in October for a second round of analysis. Last June, the first round of testing on 11,161 households showed 67 percent of adults ages 18 and older had immunity from prior infection or vaccination, and 43 percent of 0 to 17-year-olds had immunity.

“Obviously both of those numbers will be a lot higher now,” Blum says. As for herd immunity, she adds: “We are probably approaching that threshold.”

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