Thurston County reports 12 new COVID-19 cases, 3 more deaths Tuesday
“I wish I had a better report today,” Schelli Slaughter, Director of Thurston County Public Health and Social Services, said as she opened her weekly COVID-19 update to the county commission Tuesday morning.
But, she said, cases in the county and across the state continue to rise.
The department reported 12 new confirmed cases of the disease Tuesday and three more deaths, county data show, bringing the local total to 1,778 cases with 33 deaths. The residents who died were two women in their 80s and a man in his 90s.
The latest residents to be diagnosed are:
- Two boys 9 or younger;
- A boy between ages 10 and 19;
- A woman in her 20s;
- Two women in their 40s;
- Two men in their 50s;
- Two men in their 60s;
- A man in his 80s; and
- A man in his 90s.
Of the county’s total, 1,339 residents have recovered or are recovering, meaning they’ve been released from public health-ordered isolation but could still experience health issues. A total of 128 people have been hospitalized at some point in their illness.
Four deaths and 123 cases of the disease were attributed to ongoing outbreaks at six long-term care facilities as of Sunday, according to a weekly report released Tuesday:
- Adult Family Home 1: Four residents and six staff had tested positive;
- Adult Family Home 2: Two residents had tested positive;
- Assisted Living Facility 1, known to be Garden Courte Memory Care in Olympia: 50 residents and 27 staff had tested positive, with three deaths;
- Assisted Living Facility 2: Two residents and three staff had tested positive;
- Nursing facility 1: One resident had tested positive; and
- Nursing facility 2: 23 residents and five staff had tested positive, with one death.
Transmission rates remain high
Transmission in Thurston County is considered “high,” with the state most recently reporting 87.5 people newly diagnosed with COVID-19 per 100,000 people in the county for the two-week period spanning Oct. 2-15.
However, calculating a more recent rate, using the same population estimate the state uses for Thurston County (285,800) and new cases reported by the county, results in a much higher number.
For Oct. 13-26, the rate would be nearly 105 per 100,000.
There’s a reason local public health officials publicly talk about transmission using state data instead of the county’s own more recent numbers, county COVID-19 spokesperson Magen Johnson told The Olympian. The issue has been addressed in recent letters to the community from Thurston County Health Officer Dr. Dimyana Abdelmalek.
It has to do with two different types of tests: PCR tests, which test for genetic material from the virus, and antigen tests, which test for viral proteins. Abdelmalek said antigen tests, which can return results rapidly, have become more reliable over time but aren’t as reliable as PCR tests.
Abdelmalek wrote that people who test positive via PCR tests are considered confirmed cases, while people who test positive via antigen tests are considered “presumed positive cases.”
Thurston County investigates cases diagnosed using either test in the same fashion and reports positives from both in its daily case count.
“To us it doesn’t really matter, because a positive test is a positive test,” Johnson said. Including both, she said, gives residents a more accurate picture of what local transmission looks like.
The state dashboards, however, solely use confirmed cases — PCR test results. The state Department of Health also publishes a document with a tally of antigen-positive test results that have been reported to the department.
State guidance on consequential actions such as schools reopening and phases of reopening are tied to those state metrics, Johnson said. The local transmission rate that includes antigen and PCR test results drives other decisions that might be more restrictive than state guidance, she said, such as recent instructions regarding high school athletics.
Data on how many local positive test results per day have come from antigen testing wasn’t readily available, Johnson said, but the disparity between the two calculations is expected to grow, as the use of rapid testing expands.
Are we going back to Phase 2?
In Abdelmalek’s latest letter to the community, released Tuesday, she addressed questions about whether Thurston County might regress to Phase 2. She didn’t provide an absolute answer, but also didn’t suggest a backward move is predicted.
When the county was approved for Phase 3 in late June, its transmission rate was under 25 cases per 100,000 over 14 days, and under 2% of COVID-19 tests in the county had come back positive. According to state guidance, the secretary of Health looks at those metrics along with others, such as hospital capacity, when deciding whether counties can move forward in phases.
The county’s clearly now well over that mark for transmission, and the most recent state risk-assessment dashboard data shows 3.8% of tests during the week of Oct. 9-15 came back positive.
“Since our approval in June, transmission has increased in our county and around the state,” Abdelmalek writes.
She listed some positives, though, including that local hospitals have so far had the capacity to accommodate a surge in need and that the county has “worked with community partners to assist with ensuring organizations in need of personal protective equipment have access to it.”
“Any decision to move phases would be undertaken with consultation with the Secretary of Health, Department of Health, and the Governor’s Office,” she wrote. “At this time, no county in Washington state has moved backwards in the phases.”
In the region
▪ Pierce County added 62 cases Tuesday and no new deaths, giving the county a total of 9,871 cases and 191 deaths.
▪ Lewis County reported seven new cases and no new deaths on Tuesday for a total of 725 cases and 12 deaths.
▪ Grays Harbor County most recently released case totals last Thursday, when it had 680 total cases and 11 deaths.
▪ Mason County reported 10 new cases Monday and no new cases Tuesday, for a total of 563 cases and nine deaths.
Around the state, nation and world
The state Department of Health had reported a total of 104,027 cases and 2,337 deaths since as of Tuesday since the pandemic began.
In the U.S., nearly 8.8 million cases had been reported and more than 226,500 people had died as of Tuesday, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
The global COVID-19 case count neared 44 million cases Tuesday and more than 1.16 million people had died, the data show.
This story was originally published October 27, 2020 at 5:13 PM.
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