Five residents die of COVID-19 in past week as Thurston County adds 524 cases
Thurston County confirmed Monday that five residents had died and 524 had contracted COVID-19 in the past week.
Three men died due to COVID-19: one in his 40s and two in their 80s. Two women also died: one in her 50s and one in her 70s. The cases and deaths were added between Nov. 1-7, according to data from Thurston County Public Health and Social Services.
There have been 21,165 confirmed cases and 225 deaths in the county from March 2020 to Sunday, per PHSS. The county considers 19,997 cases recovered or recovering as of Monday — meaning 1,168 cases remained active.
The county reported a lower case count for the past week than it did for the previous week when there were 574 reported cases. The weekly case count has not surpassed 700 for the past five weeks.
The county’s two-week case rate fell to 399 cases per 100,000 people between Oct. 17-30 after reaching 431.6 from Oct. 11-24, per data from the state Department of Health. The record high case rate in Thurston County was 523.4 from Aug. 19 to Sept. 1, the data show.
The county reports it’s responding to 14 ongoing outbreaks at congregate care settings. Since the pandemic began, there have been 101 such outbreaks.
Nine people were hospitalized with a confirmed case of COVID-19 over the past week, per PHSS. Since the start of the pandemic, the data show 1,335 people with COVID-19 have at some point been hospitalized.
The state reports the county had a hospitalization rate of 11.3 per 100,000 people between Oct. 24-30. This rate contrasts with a recent high of 18.2 recorded from Sept. 18-24.
Hospital occupancy levels remained extremely high in Thurston County, PHSS director Schelli Slaughter said during a Tuesday morning Board of County Commissioners meeting.
“We are often in that situation and that comes and goes,” Slaughter said. “Our hospital (occupancy) is always, even outside of COVID, very, very high.”
To alleviate pressure on local hospitals, Slaughter called on residents to proactively care for themselves and avoid delaying necessary healthcare. She advised residents to get the COVID-19 and flu vaccines as soon as possible.
Acute care beds were 97% full and intensive care unit beds were at 100% occupancy among Thurston County hospitals, Slaughter said. Hospitals were treating 56 COVID-19 positive patients as of Tuesday morning, she said, and 26 of them were on ventilators.
About 95.9% of ICU beds over a seven-day period were occupied in the West region, which includes Thurston County and some of its neighbors, as of Sunday. The data show 27.3% of ICU beds were occupied by COVID-19 patients in the region as well.
Hospitals in the region were 90.8% full over a seven-day period as of Sunday, per the data, while COVID-19 patients accounted for 16.6%.
From February to September, state data show 78% of COVID-19 cases (8,053) in Thurston County were in unvaccinated individuals. Meanwhile, 16.8% of cases (1,739) were in fully vaccinated individuals, per the data.
PHSS does not share the vaccination status of those who die from COVID-19 because they do not have access to that data, a county spokesperson previously said.
Vaccinations and tests
Just 58.3% of Thurston County’s 290,000 residents were fully vaccinated as of Saturday but 62.9% had initiated vaccinations, per state data. The county’s vaccination rate increased by less than a single-digit percentage point over the past week.
State data indicates 74.6% of Thurston residents 16 and older have initiated vaccinations and 69.2% have been fully vaccinated.
As of Nov. 8, 79.6% of the state population 12 and older had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 73.5% had been fully vaccinated. This percentage includes aggregate data from the Department of Defense and Veteran Affairs, both of which are not entirely reflected in the state’s data dashboard.
For comparison, 73.3% of Thurston County residents 12 and older have initiated vaccinations and 67.9% had been fully vaccinated as of Nov. 6.
Thurston County PHSS continues to offer free vaccination events every week. Events are listed on their coronavirus vaccine information website.
The county started offering pediatric doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine during a Sunday event at the Thurston County Fairgrounds for children 5-11 years old.
“Just want to take this opportunity to give thanks to all our incredible staff and volunteers from the United Way of Thurston County and our Medical Reserve Corp. who made the event very successful,” Slaughter said. “It made a lot of families and kids have very happy.”
PHSS has scheduled a similar event for children 5–11 years old for Sunday, Nov. 14 at its Capital Mall clinic. However, PHSS listed the event as full as of Tuesday and no other events were available for that age group.
“Vaccine supply for pediatric doses in Washington state is still limited,” Slaughter said. “We expect that demand is going to outpace supply as our supply chain stabilizes in the coming weeks.”
Last week, PHSS received a supply of about 500 pediatric Pfizer doses, according to county spokesperson Magen Johnson.
“We have been partnering with the school districts in Thurston County in our vaccination efforts,” Johnson wrote. “As the supply chain increases, we will be holding vaccination events at many of the schools and our Capital Mall location.”
The state initially received a pediatric vaccine supply of about 315,000 doses, the Olympian previously reported. This means families may have to call or visit more than one provider to secure a dose over the next couple of weeks.
Eligible adults can find appointments at local providers such as pharmacies by visiting the state’s Vaccine Locator website. Many supermarket pharmacies are taking walk-ins for vaccines.
Those who have difficulty scheduling appointments online can call the Department of Health vaccine hotline at 888-856-5816 or the Thurston County Public Health and Social Services line at 360-867-2610. Information for Spanish speakers is available at these numbers as well.
There have been no updates to COVID-19 testing data since Sept. 15. PHSS says the state Department of Health paused this data release to increase capacity so it can process an increasing number of tests.
The DOH does not expect to restart its reporting of testing data until about Nov. 30, according to its data dashboard.
PHSS offers testing at various locations throughout the county, but this is limited to people with symptoms or who may have been exposed by a close contact.
People also can get tested at pharmacies such as Rite Aid and Walgreens, but appointments may be limited. Over-the- counter COVID-19 antigen tests also are available at pharmacies.
In the region
▪ Pierce County had confirmed 92,796 total COVID-19 cases with 870 deaths as of Monday. Pierce County has a population of about 905,000.
▪ Grays Harbor County has seen a total of 8,793 confirmed and probable cases, with 134 deaths as of Sunday, according to state data. Grays Harbor County has a population of about 75,000.
▪ Lewis County has had a total of 10,347 confirmed and probable cases with 157 deaths as of Sunday, per state data. Lewis County has a population of almost 81,000.
▪ Mason County has reported 5,077 confirmed cases with 68 deaths as of Monday. Mason County has a population of almost 67,000.
In the state, nation and world
The state of Washington has reported a total of 742,919 COVID-19 cases and 8,827 deaths from the beginning of the pandemic to Sunday.
As of Oct. 22, the state estimated its effective reproductive number over time was 1.07 on Oct. 16, indicating the number of infected people may have been slowly increasing, the data show. This metric measures the average number of new people that one COVID-19 positive person infects.
In the U.S., about 46.6 million COVID-19 cases had been reported as of Tuesday with more than 756,400 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
Globally, more than 250.6 million people had contracted the virus and over 5 million people had died of COVID-19 as of Tuesday, the data show.
This story was originally published November 9, 2021 at 1:29 PM.
