More Tri-Cities area COVID deaths, amid grim December case counts

Three more Tri-Citians have died from complications of COVID-19 and 649 new cases of the disease were confirmed by the Benton Franklin Health District on Monday.

The totals were for the past three days, averaging 216 new cases a day.

Confirmed new daily cases have topped 200 since the previous weekend’s totals were announced.

The recent deaths announced by the local health district on Monday were all residents of Benton County.

They included both a woman and a man in their 60s with no known underlying health conditions linked to a risk for a severe case of COVID-19.

And a woman in her 80s with underlying health conditions also died.

They bring total COVID deaths of residents in the Tri-Cities area to 213, including 144 in Benton County and 69 in Franklin County.

The new cases announced on Monday included 390 in Benton County and 259 in Franklin County, which has a little less than half as many people.

The two counties have had 17,676 cases confirmed since the start of the pandemic, including 9,947 in Benton County and 7,729 in Franklin County.

Franklin County has had 1,090 new cases of COVID confirmed per 100,000 residents in the two weeks ending Dec. 7.

Benton County has had 756 new cases of COVID confirmed per 100,000 residents in the same time period.

There is a lag in the two-week case rate report because cases are backdated to when each patient went in for testing or when symptoms appeared.

Bad start to month

As of Friday, which was 35% through the month of December, the two counties had already had 68% of the number of total cases reported in July. In July the area reached its first peak in cases and then daily case counts started to fall.

The two counties were at 36% of the death tally for all of July as of Friday.

That concerns the Benton Franklin Health District, since deaths lag hospitalizations, which have increased this month. However, the local district also said that hospital staff are getting better at treating COVID patients as better treatments and science becomes available.

The health district reported on Monday that local hospitals were treating 70 patients for COVID-19, either with positive test results or pending test results, up from COVID patient numbers in the 50s at the start of the month.

The first week of December locally hospitalized COVID patients averaged 55 per day and the second week they averaged 71 a day.

The 70 patients hospitalized for COVID treatment on Monday accounted for 18% of all patients in the hospitals in Richland, Kennewick, Pasco and Prosser.

The state recommends that COVID patients be fewer than 10% of all patients in hospitals to assure readiness to treat more COVID patients.

Washington state

The Washington State Department of Health reported 2,328 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Sunday and 4,181 cases on Saturday.

The department does not report deaths on weekends.

Statewide totals have reached 202,063 cases and 2,879 deaths, up from 199,735 cases Saturday.

The department cautioned that Sunday’s case counts could include up to 2,600 duplicates. Negative results dating back to Nov. 21 as well as positive results from Nov. 30-Dec. 6 are incomplete, the department’s website says.

“The Epidemiologic Curves tab is the most accurate representation of COVID activity and is updated daily as new cases are identified and duplicates are resolved,” the site says.

King County continues to report the state’s highest counts for cases, 53,927, while Pierce has 21,460 cases and Spokane has 21,361.

They are followed by Snohomish, Yakima, Clark, Benton and Franklin counties, according to the most recent state data complete for all counties. If Benton and Franklin counties were considered together, they would rank fifth for cases.

King County has the most deaths with 912, followed by Snohomish with 306, according to state data.

Each of the state’s 39 counties have reported positive cases and all but three have reported at least one virus-related death.

There are 1,394 cases that have not been assigned to a county.

There have been 3,347,903 tests conducted in the state with 6% coming back positive.

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

This story was originally published December 14, 2020 at 2:53 PM.