Another person has died from COVID-19 in Thurston County

Another Thurston County resident has died of COVID-19 and 15 more residents tested positive for the disease, Public Health and Social Services announced Wednesday.

The man who died was in his 60s and had underlying health conditions that contributed to his death. The other five Thurston County residents who died from the disease also had underlying health conditions which contributed to their deaths.

The fifteen new diagnoses are in:

• Two boys and two girls between the ages of 10 and 19;
• A man and three women in their 20s;
• A man in his 30s;
• A woman in her 40s;
• A man and two women in their 50s;
• A man and a woman in their 60s;

Thurston County Health Officer Dr. Dimyana Abdelmalek continues to say new cases are a result of travel. She said people are heading to places both out of county and out of state where COVID-19 had a more severe impact, the Olympian reported yesterday.

The majority of today’s cases and of all cases in the county are in people between the ages of 20 and 29, according to county data. Overall, people in their 20s make up 20 percent of the case total. In the past, both Abdelmalek and her predecessor Dr. Diana Yu, equated this to people in the age group gathering together without observing proper social distancing practices.

With today’s additions, 519 Thurston County resident have tested positive for the disease since the first case was discovered on March 11. Since then, 308 people have “recovered” or are “recovering,” which means they are no longer under public health isolation, according to the county. Those who have been hospitalized remains at 43 while the number of people who have died has gone up to 6.

IN THE REGION

• Pierce County is reporting 94 new cases of COVID-19 bringing their overall case total to 4,004. No new deaths were reported in the county on Wednesday. A total of 104 people have died in the county from the disease.
• Lewis County shut down all youth sports tournaments that would bring in players from other counties to compete. The county has reported no new cases since Monday, July 20. Their case total remains at 131 with three deaths.
  
  
• Mason County announced three new cases, a man and woman in their 30s and a woman in her 20s, bringing the county’s total to 95 with one death.
• Grays Harbor County has reported a total of 65 cases and one death.

AROUND THE STATE, NATION AND WORLD

• Washington State’s Department of Health updated it’s case total to 49,247 with 1,468 deaths.
• In the U.S., nearly 4 million people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and 142,756 have died from the disease, data from Johns Hopkins University shows.
• Globally, over 15 million people have tested positive for the disease with 619,784 people dying as a result.

This story was originally published July 22, 2020 at 4:28 PM.