LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in Nevada from 2020 to 2022, behind only heart disease and cancer. The pandemic took a $15 billion price tag for its impact on Nevada workers.
Now, a wide-ranging report released by the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Office of Analysis examines broader impacts of the pandemic: from job losses to economic recovery, from substance abuse to suicide, from impacts on students’ test scores to changes. in crime rates.
And if COVID-19 seems like background noise to you, it still exists. New daily cases are increasing. For the past seven consecutive weeks (April 24 to June 12), cases in Clark County have increased. But it’s a statistic that affects a small fraction of families compared to when the pandemic made headlines every day. There are now only 38 new cases daily and the number has not exceeded 100 since mid-January.
At the peak of the Omicron strain of COVID-19 that began around the Christmas holidays of 2021, Clark County reached a record high of 6,110 cases in a single day (Saturday, January 8, 2022).
The new report concludes that Nevada’s pandemic experience was not dramatically different from what happened in other states.
“The impacts Nevada experienced from the COVID-19 public health emergency were very similar to those of surrounding states and the nation. Although the epidemiological impact the state experienced was devastating, with more than 900,000 cases, more than 12,000 deaths of Nevadans, and nearly 95,000 potential years of life lost, the economic, educational, and behavioral health impacts were also significant and likely the state takes longer to recover. of.”
Impact on employment and the economy
COVID-19 remains a hot topic for thousands of people who lost their jobs and paid a high price for government decisions to suppress the virus by closing “non-essential” businesses. The rush to obtain unemployment benefits was accompanied by criminal abuse of government funding. This resulted in bureaucratic gridlock and anger over decisions that the medical community saw as a necessity to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed when they were needed most.
Nevada workers lost more than $15 billion in income between March 2020 and December 2022, according to the report. The impact spread throughout the economy, although trade, transportation and public services actually saw stronger growth.
One element of the report that was a bit surprising showed that the state’s hospital staff weathered the pandemic better than in other states. “Nevada is quite unique in that there was less turnover in public health compared to other states, especially in leadership positions, despite these challenges,” the report says.
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Wages kept pace with inflation during the first year, according to the DHHS report. “The pandemic likely resulted in a compression of workers’ real wages, as cumulative wage growth had a 60% (weekly) and 33% (hourly) chance of outpacing cumulative inflation between March 2020 and December. of 2022”. But inflation outpaced wages in 2021 and 2022. The situation has gotten much worse in the last 18 months.
The housing affordability problem has roots dating back to the Great Recession of 2008, but the problem worsened during the pandemic. “Housing affordability became increasingly stressed as Nevada’s housing price-to-income ratio increased by 16% (7.1 times per capita income to 8.3 times per capita income),” according to the report.
Homeless
Homelessness reversed a nearly decade-long downward trend as people lost their jobs and some lost all interest in returning to the job market.
The estimated homeless population increased 10.4% (6,900 to 7,618) between 2020 and 2022, according to the DHHS report. More than half of that increase occurred in northern Nevada.
“In response to Nevada’s struggling economy, the State of Nevada spent $913,596,842 on housing affordability assistance, which was the second-highest spending category of COVID-19 relief funds received from the federal government,” says the report.
Recent estimates show that in Clark County alone, there were 7,928 homeless people counted in the annual point-in-time survey on January 25, 2024. That’s a 56% increase over the past three years.
Substance abuse
The report found that drug-related deaths had a significant increase during the pandemic.
“Rates were at their lowest level in six years at the end of 2019. For 2020, rates saw an increase of almost 50% compared to the previous year’s average, reaching their highest level in six years in the third quarter of 2021,” the DHHS report says. .
And of all the drug-related deaths, officials said black people were hit hardest. “While that population has always had disproportionately higher rates, the gap has grown substantially in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic,” the report says.
Data from hospital emergency rooms showed no significant change related to substance abuse deaths. “This difference in trends suggests that the pandemic reduced opportunities for medical intervention in substance use-related crises,” the report says.
Mental health and suicide
Health officials said suicide rates among young people were rising even before the pandemic, but those rates have increased substantially.
“Suicide attempts treated in both settings increased after the second quarter of 2020. Suicide attempts resulting in youth hospital admissions have been on an increasing trend since 2016 and continued through 2022,” the report says.
Suicide attempts among adults did not change statistically.
Social isolation influenced the mental health of Nevadans, as did the economic impacts of the pandemic.
Initially, the message to the public was to avoid hospitals except for serious health problems. “However, after hospital capacity reopened, visits related to mental health, suicide, and substance use increased, especially among the young population,” the report says.
Student Test Scores
Nevada schoolchildren were “significantly impacted” by the public health emergency, according to the DHHS report.
“When the pandemic hit, schools across the state moved to remote learning to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. While this helped reduce transmission among students and their families, it also created a significant barrier for many students and made it difficult to complete schoolwork and obtain a well-rounded education,” the report says.
The report examines student assessment results on the ACT exam and National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores. Analysis of test scores begins on page 44 of the full report:
“Elementary students were hit the hardest: NAEP scores fell 6.2 points for fourth graders (the 13th largest decline in the country). The performance of middle and high school students was also affected by remote learning, but not to the same extent,” the report says.
Crime rates
Nevada’s violent crime rate (specifically, domestic violence) did not follow a nationwide trend that saw incidents increase by 8%. Instead, rates remained stable here.
But the report cites a 168% increase in reported hate crimes between 2019 and 2022.
A hate crime is defined as a criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by the offender’s prejudice against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.
“Of the hate crimes committed in Nevada over the past three years, on average, 75% are motivated by race/ethnicity/ancestry bias. Between 30 and 40% of hate crimes are simple attacks and around a third are committed in a residence or home,” the report states.
Like other states, Nevada saw a dramatic drop in property crimes at the beginning of the pandemic and an increase again beginning in 2021 and 2022.
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