31 small COVID outbreaks in Tri-Cities schools, child care centers, restaurants and more

The Benton Franklin Health District was investigating 31 separate outbreaks of COVID-19 in the two counties as of Wednesday.

They included cases spread at schools, child care centers, restaurants, health care facilities, farm worker housing and a range of other industry settings, said Rick Dawson, senior manager for the local health district, told the agency’s board members.

An outbreak is defined as a spread of two or more cases at a place, and the health district has been able to identify outbreaks relatively early and stop them at two or three cases, he said.

That helped keep the new cases reported in Benton County for the last week to 91 and in Franklin County to 73.

Cases confirmed by positive test results since March in the two counties now total 8,540.

For the most recent week with data available, Aug. 31 to Sept. 6, Benton County COVID-19 test results were coming back 9% positive and Franklin County test results were 16% positive.

Statewide for the same time period the average rate was just over 3% positive.

There were three more deaths from complications of COVID-19 reported last week in the Tri-Cities area, bringing the total deaths in the two counties to 163.

About half of those who have died have been residents of nursing homes and other facilities for the elderly.

The number of locally hospitalized patients being treated for COVID-19 was not available for the week after the Washington state Department of Health reported problems with its data collection system.

On Thursday, it reported just seven COVID-19 patients at hospitals in Benton and Franklin counties, a number that the Benton Franklin Health District said on Friday was likely wrong.

The Department of Health was working Friday to find the cause of its hospital data problem.

School reopening data

Local public health officials remain optimistic that Benton County will meet the state target of fewer than 75 cases per 100,000 over two weeks for opening schools in early October. But they are concerned about a plateau in what had been a sharp drop in the new case rate in Franklin County.

The health district said the preliminary number of new cases is down to 72 per 100,000 people over the two weeks ending Sept. 16 in Benton County and 112 per 100,000 in Franklin County.

However, those numbers are based on when the patients say symptoms first appeared, so more new cases will be backdated and added to those numbers.

The confirmed, rather than preliminary, new case rates were 99 for Benton County and 198 for Franklin County per 100,000 people for the two weeks ending Sept. 7.

The statewide new case rate is 72 cases per 100,000 people over two weeks, based on confirmed data through Sept. 11.

COVID and the heart

About 50% of autopsies for people severely ill with COVID-19 had the virus in their hearts, according to a study by UW Medicine at the University of Washington.

Any virus can infect heart-muscle cells, but the new coronavirus responsible for the current pandemic has a particularly detrimental effect, according to UW Medicine.

The resulting inflammation when the coronavirus infects the heart has been diagnosed in otherwise healthy college athletes who are thought to be recovered from mild or asymptomatic COVID infections, it said.

“We don’t know how much direct infection of COVID is going to affect future cardiovascular disease,” said April Stempien-Otero, a cardiologist at the UW Medicine Heart Institute in Seattle.

“But we do know that anyone who has high blood pressure, diabetes with heart disease, artery disease — that those patients have twice the rate of death from COVID,” she said.

Washington state

The Washington state Department of Health on Friday reported 404 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and six deaths.

Statewide totals from the illness caused by the coronavirus are at 81,602 cases and 2,037 deaths, up from 81,198 cases and 2,031 deaths Thursday. Washington’s population is estimated at about 7.6 million, according to U.S. Census figures from July 2019.

Seventeen people with confirmed COVID-19 cases were admitted to Washington state hospitals on Aug. 30, the most recent date with complete data. Late March had two days with 88 people admitted, the highest numbers to date during the pandemic.

The test numbers reflect only polymerase chain reaction tests, which are administered while the virus is presumably still active in the body.

King County continues to have the highest numbers in Washington, with 21,264 cases and 751 deaths. Yakima County is second, with 11,229 cases and 256 deaths. Pierce is third with cases at 7,467 and 191 deaths, according to state Department of Health data.

Benton and Franklin counties rank sixth and seventh behind Snohomish and Spokane counties.

All counties in Washington have cases. Eleven counties have case counts of fewer than 100.

On Friday, Washington had a 1,078-per-100,000-people case rate. The national rate is 2,012, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Louisiana has the highest rate in the United States at 3,441. Vermont is lowest at 272.

There had been more than 6.7 million confirmed coronavirus cases and 198,407 deaths from the virus in the United States as of Friday afternoon, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The United States has the highest number of reported cases and deaths of any nation. More than 948,000 people have died from the disease worldwide. Global cases exceed 30 million.

Craig Sailor, The (Tacoma) News Tribune, contributed to this report.