‘Critical juncture.’ Nearly 600 more Tri-Cities COVID cases reported as Thanksgiving nears

Nearly 600 more confirmed cases of COVID-19 over the past three days and another death due to complications of the disease were reported by the Benton Franklin Health District on Monday.

However, there may have been more cases.

The Washington state Department of Health disease reporting system has been overwhelmed with test results, and as of Saturday had 53,000 backlogged results not yet added to tallies for counties across the state.

The 595 new local cases with completed reports on Monday come to an average of 198 new cases per day. The report covered three days because the local health district does not update information over the weekend.

That’s up from an average of 163 new cases per day last week. The three before that had steadily increasing rates averaging 122, 82 and 42 cases per day, respectively. Local cases are reported on a weekly schedule of the weekend through Friday.

“We are really at a critical juncture,” said Dr. Amy Person, health officer for Benton and Franklin counties, on Friday.

The rising case numbers are not just in working age adults, she said.

“Since October we have seen case rates rise four times in people age 80 and older,” she said. “These are our most vulnerable population, the ones in whom we saw death rates skyrocket in March. We don’t want that same situation happening now.”

Even people who think they are not at severe risk if exposed to the virus, need to be aware that they put everyone they come in contact with, whether they are at work or socializing with family and friends.

“If we expose them and they are infected, they have the potential to expose and infect their co-workers, their friends, their families,” she said. “Even people we don’t know are affected by the actions that we’re taking.”

Case rates rose through mid summer, but the situation is very different now as people are spending more time indoors, where the coronavirus is more easily spread, she said.

“With the Thanksgiving holiday coming we need everyone to take action,” she said.

That includes wearing a mask indoors when not at home, wearing a mask outside if within six feet of a nonhousehold member, and not gathering with nonhousehold members.

“I know that’s hard with the Thanksgiving holidays coming up, but it is going to be even harder if we have to face the reality of rising case numbers, rising hospitalizations and potentially rising deaths,” she said.

Tri-Cities cases, deaths

The death reported on Monday was a Benton County man in his 60s with underlying health conditions that put him at risk of a severe case of COVID-19.

His death brings total deaths due to the disease in the Tri-Cities area to 198, including 134 residents of Benton County and 64 residents of Franklin County.

The new case rate per 100,000 people over two weeks has jumped above 700 in Franklin County.

The health district reported 741 new cases per 100,000 in Franklin County for the two weeks through Nov. 16, the latest period with mostly complete data based on when symptoms appeared or tests were administered.

Benton County’s new case rate for the same two-week period was 670.

A week ago, Benton County’s new case rate was 501 and Franklin County’s was 467.

Local hospitals reported to public health officials that they had 43 patients being treated for COVID-19, either with positive test results or pending test results, as of Monday.

That’s up from 34 a week ago.

The 43 patients being treated for COVID-19 on Monday accounted for 12% of all patients in Richland, Kennewick, Pasco and Prosser. The state goal is under 10% COVID patients in hospitals to ensure adequate capacity.

For the seven days of Nov. 12 to Nov. 18, results of tests of Benton County residents were running 19% positive, a 3% increase from the previous week.

For Franklin County residents, results for the same seven days were 25% positive, up 8% from the previous week.

Washington state

The Washington state Department of Health did not report new COVID cases for the state on Sunday and said results released Friday and Saturday may have been undercounted do to its technical issues.

On Saturday it had reported 1,717 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 for a total of 141,260 since the start of the pandemic. The department does not report deaths on weekends, leaving the death toll at 2,619 as of Friday.

The Department of Health said that its system designed to receive and process approximately 33,000 total test results from all diseases, was receiving 30,000 to 50,000 results a day.

A backlog of test results means the number of new COVID-19 cases it reported statewide Friday and Saturday likely was incomplete.

John Hopkins University data as of Saturday showed 12,051,253 cases and 255,588 deaths have been reported in the U.S. The data showed 57,985,648 cases and 1,378,567 deaths have been reported globally.

This story was originally published November 23, 2020 at 1:56 PM.