Thurston County adds 64 new COVID-19 cases Tuesday
Thurston county added 64 COVID-19 cases but no new deaths as the result of the virus Tuesday as transmission continues its alarming rise.
To date, there have been 3,280 confirmed cases and 46 deaths, including two deaths in the past week, according to data from the Thurston County Public Health and Social Services department.
Of that total, 216 patients have been hospitalized at some point in their illness, including 58 in the past week, 1,921 have recovered or are recovering, and there have been 26 outbreaks in congregate care settings, including nine that are ongoing.
In the past week, about 7.4% of tests have come back positive – nearly four times higher than the target of less than 2%. But Schelli Slaughter, health department director, said the high positively rate may be inaccurate and too high because the state is unable to report all negative tests results at this time. Slaughter said the state reporting system has been overwhelmed by the number of COVID-19 cases so it has been prioritizing releasing the positive results.
“The labs will continue to report those negative numbers so we will get that later,” Slaughter said. “In order to calculate that positivity rate, which is a really important metric for us to tell us what community transmission might be like in our community, you have to know the total number of tests ... so that 7.4% is likely a lower number than what it actually is.”
There have been about 259.6 newly diagnosed cases per 100,000 people in Thurston County over the last two weeks, 10 times the goal of less than 25, according to state data released Tuesday for Nov. 30.
Additionally, the state reported the average daily testing rate per 100,000 people to be at 225.2 over the past week.
Health Officer Dimyana Abdelmalek said the county continues to see high transmission rates mostly due to household spread, travel and private gatherings. She added there was a drop off in cases over the weekend, but that’s likely due to testing sites being closed over Thanksgiving.
“So we’re watching this coming week extremely closely,” Abdelmalek said, “just because the disease transmission that occurs over these holiday weekends tends to set the stage for our COVID transmission rates going forward.”
To help limit the spread, the state Department of Health has enabled COVID-19 exposure notifications on smartphones. WA Notify, a technology developed by Apple and Google, allows smartphones to anonymously recognize when the user has been in close contact with someone who has registered a positive test result. The notifications can be turned on in iPhone settings or be downloaded as an app for Android devices.
Abdelmalek said computer modeling has shown that this technology has the potential to decrease infections by about 11% and deaths by 15% if just 15% of people opt-in to the service.
“A lot of us have questions,” Abdelmalek said. “Am I being exposed to books in the store? What about if I have to ride the bus to work because I don’t have a car? This allows people to know if they’ve been exposed and how they can protect themselves and their families. So that’s really exciting news.”
In the region
▪ Pierce County announced 282 new cases and six new deaths Tuesday, including four people in their 80s and two in their 60s. The county also noted a sharp increase in testing volume caused by delays in processing and reporting, likely making Tuesday’s number an undercount. The county has now reported 16,710 cases and 241 deaths.
▪ Lewis County reported 21 new cases on Tuesday for a total of 1,254 cases and 16 deaths.
▪ Grays Harbor County announced 11 new cases on Monday night, giving the county 1,031 cases and 17 deaths.
▪ Mason County reported 6 additional cases on Tuesday for a total of 829 cases with 11 deaths.
Around the state, nation and world
The state Department of Health added 2,197 cases and 31 deaths on Tuesday for a total of 167,216 cases and 2,805 deaths. Additionally, the state reported there have been 10,920 total hospitalizations.
In the U.S., more than 13.7 million cases had been reported and more than 270,000 had died as of Tuesday, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
Globally, 63.8 million cases had been reported and nearly 1.48 million people had died as of Tuesday, the data show.
