Thurston County announces 9 new cases of COVID-19 Tuesday
Thurston County Public Health and Social Services on Tuesday announced nine new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in county residents, bringing the county’s total to 945 local diagnoses and 12 deaths since the pandemic began.
The latest residents to be diagnosed are:
- A girl and boy 9 or younger;
- A boy between ages 10 and 19;
- A woman and man in their 20s;
- A woman in her 30s;
- A man in his 40s;
- A man in his 50s; and
- A man in his 60s.
As of Aug. 23, according to this week’s more in-depth data report released Tuesday, 66% of residents who have been hospitalized at some point for COVID-19 had an underlying condition, and 83% of residents who have died from health issues related to the disease had an underlying condition.
No additional hospitalizations or recoveries were reported Tuesday, leaving the total number of residents who’ve required hospitalization at 59 and the total number considered “recovering” or “recovered” from the disease at 724.
There are currently seven ongoing outbreaks in congregate care settings, county data shows. An outbreak at the county jail included eight inmates and three staff members as of Tuesday morning, according to Public Health Director Schelli Slaughter, and a county spokesperson said no cases announced Tuesday were related to the outbreak.
Slaughter told county commissioners Tuesday that the death of a county resident in his 70s last week was related to one of the outbreaks.
The county has not shared specifically where the six outbreaks are occurring, just that there are two at adult family homes, one at an adult group home, two at long-term care facilities, and one at another congregate care setting about which the county has not shared any information.
The county has said it will release more specific information about the outbreaks in its weekly in-depth COVID-19 data report next Tuesday.
County-specific guidance?
In a letter to the community released Tuesday, local Health Officer Dr. Dimyana Abdelmalek suggested Thurston County-specific COVID-19 guidance could be in the works.
She answered three questions in her letter, including one about why the county remains in Phase 3 of Gov. Jay Inslee’s plan to reopen the economy when the county’s number of cases is higher than allowed by the phase requirements.
The county’s number of cases per 100,000 was below the required 25 over two weeks when the county applied to enter Phase 3. On Tuesday, the governor’s risk-assessment dashboard showed Thurston’s rate at 51.4 new cases per 100,000 people over 14 days.
Other factors are also included in the decision for a county to move through phases, such as testing capacity and health care system readiness.
“As transmission rates within the county increased, the positive testing rates increased and depending on patient flux, our hospital capacity has varied,” Abdelmalek wrote. “We have not exceeded 10% of hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 positive patients.”
Inslee has paused counties’ movements forward through phases, she wrote, and has added a variety of restrictions.
“We are in contact with the Department of Health and, at this time, we are building on the approach taken by the Governor to work on Thurston County specific guidance to limit the spread of COVID-19 in our community, rather than moving the entire county back to Phase 2,” Abdelmalek wrote.
It’s not clear what form such guidance could take, but county COVID-19 spokesperson Magen Johnson said a specific example would be when Abdelmalek wrote a letter in July urging all K-12 schools to stay closed to in-person classes for the 2020 fall term.
“When we have something to announce, we will announce it,” Johnson said.
In the region
- Pierce County reported 30 new COVID-19 cases and one new death Tuesday, a woman in her 90s from Tacoma with underlying health conditions. Its totals are now 6,485 cases and 144 deaths.
- Lewis County announced four new cases: one patient under age 20, one in their 20s, one in their 40s, and one in their 50s. The county’s total is now 327 with four deaths.
- Mason County announced six new cases, for a total of 321 cases and one death. Mason County Public Health considers 53 cases to be active.
- Grays Harbor County had 218 total cases with five deaths as of Monday night.
Around the state, nation and world
- Washington state’s Department of Health hadreported 71,705 COVID-19 cases and 1,876 deaths as of Tuesday.
- In the U.S., about 5.8 million people had tested positive for the disease as of Tuesday and more than 178,000 people had died from it, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. That is at least three times as many people who have died of COVID-19 in the U.S. in the last five months than who died of the flu during the 2019-2020 fall and winter season, according to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control.
- Globally, more than 23.7 million COVID-19 cases had been reported along with nearly 816,000 deaths, as of Tuesday.
This story was originally published August 25, 2020 at 5:48 PM.
.jpg)