Michele Bever, South Heartland District Health Department (SHDHD) executive director, is reporting steadily increasing cases of COVID-like Illness (CLI) and influenza-like illness (ILI) locally since September. While Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) cases remain low in the South Heartland district, there has been a rapid rise in RSV illness statewide over the past 6 weeks.

“With respect to community levels of COVID-19, the SARS-CoV-2 virus levels in wastewater have been trending up steeply since the beginning of November and were very high for the week ending Dec. 3,” Bever said. SARS-CoV-2 i...