‘Huge influx.’ 537 new COVID cases confirmed in Tri-Cities in three days

The Tri-Cities area had 537 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed over the last three days, the Benton Franklin Health District reported on Monday.

The new known cases brought the total for the bicounty area to more than 12,000 since the start of the pandemic, with case numbers rising quickly.

Over the past month, the Tri-Cities area has had 20% of the total known cases of the entire pandemic, said Dr. Amy Person, health officer for Benton and Franklin counties, speaking during the Tri-City Development Council’s Coffee with Karl webcast.

That means a fifth of the cases have been reported during just an eighth of the pandemic.

“It has been a huge influx,” she said.

Benton County has seen a particularly steep increase in known cases and is on track to exceed the new cases seen at the former peak in July, she said.

Benton County has had a quarter of its cases in the last month, she said.

Its rate of new cases per 100,000 people over two weeks now exceeds 500, far above a rate that dropped almost to 75 in late September.

Hospital concerns

Dr. Person also is concerned that local hospitals are treating more patients for COVID-19.

Hospitals are not as full as they are on the west side of the state or in Spokane, she said.

But that still could affect the Tri-Cities, as hospitals look to transfer out the most critically ill patients to the Seattle area, and other areas with packed intensive care units may look to transfer patients to the Tri-Cities.

Here hospital leaders are concerned not so much with having enough beds, but having enough staff and preventing employee burnout.

Usually hospitals turn to services that provide “traveling” nurses when they face a temporary shortage, but many hospitals are competing for staff, including intensive care nurses who do temporary stints at hospitals, Dr. Person said.

“People say our hospitals are fine now. That’s a little bit of a dangerous place to go,” she said.

If we wait until hospitals are full, there is no “safety valve,” she said.

COVID case rates

The 537 cases reported on Monday average 179 per day. The health district does not report cases over the weekend.

That compares to 122 cases per day on average last week, 82 per day the previous week and 42 per day the week before that.

The cases reported on Monday include 324 in Benton County for a total of 6,617 there since the start of the pandemic and 213 in Franklin County for a total of 5,529.

The case rate for Benton County is 501 new cases per 100,000 for the two weeks through Nov. 9, the most recent case rate available. For Franklin County it is 467.

The Washington state Department of Health considers 75 new cases per 100,000 people over two weeks as high risk for school reopening.

However, Dr. Person said the state will be revising that number upwards.

More information is available since the state set its case rate recommendations. It shows that the majority of schools that resume some in-person classes while following strict protocols don’t contribute significantly to disease in the community and do not have outbreaks within the schools, she said.

In the Tri-Cities, children are being infected outside school, including from birthday parties and participating in nonschool team sports, she said.

However, with the rising Tri-Cities case rates there will be continued re-evaluation of school reopenings, she said.

“If we are looking at an explosion of disease activity that is causing us to need to restrict other things, we also need to see how schools fit into that,” she said.

No deaths reported

No new deaths from complications of COVID-19 were reported in the Tri-Cities on Monday, leaving the total residents who have died from the disease in Benton and Franklin counties at 193.

Local hospitals were treating 34 patients for COVID-19, including patients waiting for test results, on Monday.

With hospitals treating more patients for other reasons than earlier this fall, hospital readiness targets are not being met in the Tri-Cities area. About 84% of licensed beds were in use and the target is less than 80%.

The 34 patients being treated for COVID on Monday accounted for 9% of all hospital patients in Richland, Kennewick, Pasco and Prosser.

Washington state

The Washington State Department of Health on Sunday reported 2,309 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, setting a new record for daily cases since the start of the pandemic for the third day in the row.

On Saturday 2,233 cases were reported and on Friday 2,142 cases were reported, the first time that new known cases had topped 2,000 for a single day.

The department does not report deaths on weekends.

Statewide totals from the illness caused by the coronavirus are at 130,040 cases and 2,519 deaths, up from 127,731 cases on Saturday.

King County continues to have the highest case numbers in Washington, with 34,415 cases and 836 deaths. Pierce is second with 13,068 cases and 247 deaths. Yakima County has 12,521 cases and 283 deaths.

Spokane and Snohomish are next, followed by Benton in sixth place, Clark in seventh and Franklin in eighth. If Benton and Franklin counties were counted together, they would rank fifth for cases, behind Spokane.

All counties in Washington have cases.

Lauren Kirschman of The (Tacoma) News Tribune contributed to this report.

This story was originally published November 16, 2020 at 2:10 PM.