Sixth COVID-19 outbreak reported in Thurston County, 15 cases reported Wednesday

Thurston County’s Department of Public Health and Social Services reported a sixth COVID-19 outbreak at a congregate care facility in the county and 15 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday.

County data show the 15 people who tested positive are:

• Four boys and a girl between the ages of 10 and 19;
• Two men in their 20s;
• A man and a woman in their 30s;
• Two women in their 40s;
• A man in his 50s;
• A man and a woman in their 60s; and
• a woman in her 70s.

On Tuesday, Thurston County health officials reported a fifth COVID-19 outbreak at a congregate care setting and on Wednesday the county announced a sixth.

The Olympian also reported Wednesday that one inmate at the Thurston County Jail tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday. On Tuesday, all of the jail’s inmates were tested and the county expects to have results back from those tests in 24 to 48 hours at the earliest, said county spokesperson Magen Johnson.

When asked if the jail is the source of the sixth outbreak, Johnson said “at this time, I cannot confirm or deny that the outbreak is in the jail.”

Initially, the jail was not considered the site of an outbreak because only one case had originated there. But if one more inmate tests positive, the jail would become the site of an outbreak, according to the state’s Department of Health’s definition as well as the county’s.

The other five outbreaks in the county were described by Thurston County Health Officer Dr. Dimyana Abdelmalek in her most recent Letter to the Community as “two adult family homes, one adult group home, and two long-term care facilities.”

In her letter, Dr Abdelmalek also wrote a main driver of new cases for the county is household spread. She wrote social gathering and travel have lead to more cases.

Since the first COVID-19 case was announced on March 11, 883 county residents have tested positive for the virus. The county has reported 670 residents have “recovered” from the disease or are “recovering” from it, meaning they are no longer under public health isolation.

The county also announced Wednesday that another person has been hospitalized for disease treatment. A total of 59 people have been hospitalized for treatment over the course of the pandemic, and 11 county residents have died.

In the region

• Pierce County reported 62 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday and two deaths stemming from it. A total of 6,186 cases have been reported in the county along with 135 deaths.
• Lewis County announced 12 more residents tested positive for the disease on Wednesday. Four of the residents who tested positive are under age 20, two are in their 20s, another two are in their 40s, three are in their 50s and one is in their 80s. Four county residents have died from the disease and a total of 296 have tested positive.
• Mason County discovered one new case Wednesday, bringing the county’s case total to 291 with one death.
• Grays Harbor County reported three new cases Wednesday. The county has had 153 residents test positive and three die from the disease. Currently 31 cases are considered active.

Around the state, nation and world

• Washington state’s Department of Health reported a total of 68,689 cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday and 1,822 deaths stemming from it.
• In the U.S., more than 5.5 million people have tested positive for the disease and nearly 173,000 people had died from it as of Wednesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
• Globally, 22.3 million people had been diagnosed with the disease and more than 784,000 people have died from it.

This story was originally published August 19, 2020 at 6:09 PM.