BOISE, Idaho — Dr. Ryan Cole, a pathologist and owner of Cole Diagnostics, a testing lab in Garden City, last spoke to KTVB in mid-December about rarely leaving the lab with so many COVID-19 samples waiting to be tested. Just over a month later, the pandemic in Idaho is starting to slow, much as he anticipated then.
“If you look at the history of all coronaviruses, coronaviruses are seasonal,” he explained to KTVB on Dec. 17. “We kind of suppressed that life cycle with the lockdowns after March by about three months, and usually in the Fall and Winter, coronaviruses will flare, be it the common cold type or the pandemic we do have.”
When KTVB last spoke to Dr. Cole, Idaho conducted about 45,000 tests. Now, that number has fallen to about 30,000.