It’s time for anoth­er install­ment of of our spe­cial series COVID-19 Update, bring­ing you the lat­est devel­op­ments on the nov­el coro­n­avirus out­break that pub­lic health author­i­ties here and through­out the coun­try are work­ing dili­gent­ly to mitigate.

Unlike some of the non­sense that is unfor­tu­nate­ly cir­cu­lat­ing on social media, all the infor­ma­tion you’ll find here is accu­rate and based on sound science.

Idaho joins the “stay at home” party

Ida­ho Gov­er­nor Brad Lit­tle, a Repub­li­can, has come under fierce and with­er­ing fire in recent days for an inad­e­quate response to the nov­el coro­n­avirus pandemic.

Now he is scram­bling to respond. The state’s news­pa­per of record, The Ida­ho States­man, which is based in Boise, pub­lished a blis­ter­ing edi­to­r­i­al yes­ter­day denounc­ing Lit­tle for not ris­ing to the moment. The news­pa­per opined:

With few con­firmed cas­es and a seem­ing­ly low spread of COVID-19, Ida­ho had a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty to lead the nation and take proac­tive pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures to “flat­ten the curve” and stem the rise in cas­es in this cri­sis. We could have been a mod­el for how to han­dle the out­break and have the fewest cas­es of coro­n­avirus in the country.

Instead, after Little’s Mon­day press con­fer­ence, we appear, yet again, to head to the bot­tom of the list.

We were hope­ful that Lit­tle would announce more strin­gent mea­sures, such as those being tak­en by oth­er states’ gov­er­nors, includ­ing Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton right next door, and by Boise May­or Lau­ren McLean.

The edi­to­r­i­al went on:

We were look­ing for a strong response from the gov­er­nor, but what did we get instead? The dead­line to file tax­es got pushed back.

We were sore­ly dis­ap­point­ed and, frankly, are con­cerned that such an unem­phat­ic response will lead to a full-blown out­break in Ida­ho, result­ing in an over­whelmed health care sys­tem and, ulti­mate­ly, what could have been pre­ventable deaths.

To date, Little’s posi­tion has been a typ­i­cal Ida­ho approach to deal­ing with a prob­lem. God for­bid that we should use the heavy hand of gov­ern­ment to stop this thing.

And make no mis­take, that’s what it’s going to take. It’s time for force­ful and aggres­sive lead­er­ship from the gov­er­nor. Leav­ing it up to indi­vid­ual cities, coun­ties and dis­tricts is woe­ful­ly inadequate.

Colum­nist Michael Deeds con­curred:

I don’t know about you, Ida­ho, but I real­ly hate look­ing like a loser.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the past twen­ty-four hours have made it dif­fi­cult to feel like we’re “win­ning” in the Gem State.

Wal­letHub, a per­son­al finance web­site that cre­ates met­rics-based state rank­ings of every­thing, just pumped out a coro­n­avirus study that will make Ida­hoans want to hide under their beds — or, at least, nev­er leave the house.

That came rough­ly twelve hours after Rachel Mad­dow blast­ed Ida­ho Gov. Brad Little’s lais­sez-faire COVID-19 poli­cies on her MSNBC show.

The evi­dence clear­ly shows that Lit­tle’s lit­tle response has not been work­ing for Ida­ho. Bow­ing to the crit­i­cism and the calls for more strin­gent action, Lit­tle has belat­ed­ly joined his col­leagues Jay Inslee and Kate Brown in putting his state under a “stay at home” order. He announced his deci­sion today at Gowen Field.

“From the get-go, our focus has been to slow the spread of coro­n­avirus to pro­tect our most vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens and pre­serve capac­i­ty in our health­care sys­tem,” Gov­er­nor Lit­tle said in a news release sent to NPI. “And from the begin­ning, I stat­ed my com­mit­ment to mak­ing deci­sions about our response to coro­n­avirus based on sci­ence. With con­firmed com­mu­ni­ty trans­mis­sion of coro­n­avirus now occur­ring in Idaho’s most pop­u­lat­ed areas, we need to take strong mea­sures to ensure our health­care facil­i­ties are not over­bur­dened. I am fol­low­ing the guid­ance of our pub­lic health experts and issu­ing a statewide stay-home order effec­tive immediately.”

“Our health­care and pub­lic safe­ty work­ers are putting them­selves in harm’s way to respond to the coro­n­avirus emer­gency, and we owe it to them to do our part by fol­low­ing this statewide stay-home order,” Gov­er­nor Lit­tle added.

The order is effec­tive for twen­ty-one days. Its actu­al text was not avail­able at press time (it’s not fin­ished yet), but we will update this post when it is.

A poster cre­at­ed by the State of Ida­ho instruct­ing Gem States to stay home

Idaho’s COVID-19 case count has gone up

Just like every oth­er state in the coun­try, Ida­ho is see­ing more COVID-19 cas­es. The total num­ber of cas­es has now reached sev­en­ty-three. There have not been any deaths yet. 1,089 peo­ple have been test­ed through the state lab­o­ra­to­ry sys­tem and sev­en hun­dred and nine­ty eight have been test­ed through com­mer­cial labs. Here’s a break­down of where the cas­es are: