Thurston County reports 18 new COVID-19 cases, bringing week’s total to 52 so far

Thurston County reported Wednesday that 18 more people have tested positive for COVID-19, continuing a week of double-digit case increases.

Data from Thurston County Public Health and Social Services show Wednesday’s cases are:

• A girl 9 years old or younger;
• Three men and two women in their 20s;
• Two men and three women in their 30s;
• A man and a woman in their 40s;
• A woman in her 50s;
• A man and two women in their 60s;
• A woman in her 70s.

In a Tuesday county commissions work session, the county’s new Health Officer, Dr. Dimyana Abdelmalek, said the sharp increase in cases is connected to “private gatherings of families and friends,” with some new cases stemming from the workplaces and travel.

Thurston County has maintained these reasons for the recent increase in cases for the past two weeks, when diagnoses first started to rise. They were initially shared by Dr. Abdelmalek’s predecessor, Dr. Diana Yu, in her final Letter to the Community on June 30.

To date, 430 county residents have tested positive for COVID-19 since the first case was discovered on March 11. Since then, 277 people have “recovered” or are “recovering,” and 39 people have been hospitalized for treatment, data from the county shows.

In the region

• Pierce County reported 67 new cases of COVID-19 and one new death on Wednesday. The county now has 3,399 cases and 101 deaths.
• Lewis County announced three new cases, one in a person 19 or younger, one in a person in their 50s and another person in their 60s. The county also found out that the state’s Department of Health had falsely attributed two cases to the county when they were in fact from elsewhere. Lewis County’s new adjusted case total is 112.
• Mason County did not announce any new cases Wednesday. Their case total is 68 with one death.
• Grays Harbor County announced their first COVID-19 related death on Wednesday. The individual’s age and gender are being withheld out of respect for their family, though the county did reveal the person had died July 14. So far, 56 people have tested positive in the county, with six of those cases reported Tuesday.

Around the state, nation and globe

• Washington state’s Department of Health reported 43,046 cases of COVID-19 and 1,421 deaths related to the disease as of Thursday.
• In the U.S., more than 3.5 million people had tested positive for the disease and more than 138,000 people had died as a result of contracting it as of Thursday, data from Johns Hopkins University shows.
• Globally, more than 13.7 million cases had been reported with over 586,000 deaths as of Thursday.

This story was originally published July 15, 2020 at 4:47 PM.