An eighth Thurston County resident has died of COVID-19

Another man has died from COVID-19 and 19 more people had been diagnosed with the disease as of Wednesday, Thurston County Public Health and Social Services (TCPHSS) announced.

The man who died Wednesday was in his 90s, the county reported, withholding whether he had underlying conditions until they receive his death certificate. This is the second death this week. On Tuesday, a man in his 60s with underlying health conditions also died.

There have been 8 COVID-19 related deaths reported in the county since the first case was reported here March 11.

Data from Thurston County shows the 19 new cases are in:

• A boy and a girl between the ages of 10-19 years old;
• A man in his 20s;
• Four men and one woman in their 30s;
• Three men and four women in their 40s;
• A man and a woman in their 50s; and
• A man and a woman in their 60s.

On Tuesday, Thurston County Health Officer Dr. Dimyana Abdelmalek reported clusters of cases had been traced to three outdoor barbecues that took place over the weekend and to an out-of-state baseball tournament that took place near the end of June or start of July.

None of the four incidents are counted as outbreaks by the county. According to the public health website, “An outbreak involves two or more linked cases of COVID-19.” The number of cases tied to each event is unknown and county spokesperson Meghan Porter said a statement is currently being prepared that will explain the nature of the four case clusters.

The Infectious Disease team performed a review of COVID-19 hospitalizations in the county and discovered nine patients were missing from the overall total. After adding the new cases, the overall total number of hospitalizations since the beginning of the pandemic rose to 55. Porter said the nine additions are not necessarily new cases or new hospitalizations, rather they had been discovered in the review and subsequently added to the count.

Since the first case was reported March 11, 628 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in Thurston County. Of those who have tested positive, 308 are considered by the county as “recovered” or “recovering,” which means they are no longer under public health isolation.

In the region

• Pierce County is reporting 94 new cases of COVID-19, bringing the overall case total to 4,680. Additionally, the county reported four more people had died from the disease, making for a total of 113 deaths.
• Lewis County announced nine new cases: one patient is under the age of 10, another is between the ages of 10 and 20, two are in their 20s, two are in their 30s, one is in their 40s, another in their 50s and one in their 60s. In total, 173 people in the county have tested positive for the disease and three people have died from it.
• Mason County reported 14 new cases on Wednesday, bring the overall total to 156 cases with one death.
• Grays Harbor County has recorded a total of 88 cases and one death.

Around the state, nation and world

• Washington state’s Department of Health reports 54,985 cases of COVID-19 and 1,555 deaths stemming from it.

• In the U.S., more than 4.48 million people had tested positive for the disease and 151,650 people had died from it as of Thursday, data from Johns Hopkins University shows.

• Globally, 17.1 million cases had been reported since the beginning of the pandemic and more than 669,000 people had died as a result as of Thursday.

This story was originally published July 29, 2020 at 5:33 PM.