Nursing homes being hit hard by post-Thanksgiving COVID infections

The post-Thanksgiving spike in COVID-19 cases in the Tri-Cities is hitting nursing and other long-term care homes hard.

The Benton Franklin Health District is investigating 18 possible outbreaks at care facilities.

“As we have seen an increase in our elderly population, this is also unfortunately being reflected in an increase in outbreaks in our long-term care facilities,” said Dr. Amy Person, health officer for the Benton Franklin Health District, at a Thursday news media briefing.

As few as one case in a long-term care home is classified as an outbreak because residents of nursing homes are so vulnerable to serious illness and death from the coronavirus and because the coronavirus can spread so easily in communal living situations.

“We are seeing infections in both staff and residents,” Dr. Person said. “This is why it is so important for us to control spread of COVID-19 in the community as a whole. It is to protect those vulnerable populations and to protect our health care system, which are affected by what goes on in the community.

At the start of Thanksgiving week, the Benton Franklin Health District said 611 long-term care staff or residents were known to be infected since the start of the pandemic.

Since then nearly 100 more cases have been confirmed for a total of 709 long-term care cases since March.

Tri-Cities cases

Known COVID-19 cases in the Tri-Cities area have topped 18,000 as of Thursday.

The Benton Franklin Health District reported 205 more cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, but warned that the data is incomplete.

The Washington state Department of Health has fallen behind on updating cases from positive test results for individual counties since Friday, Dec. 11, due to the high volume of cases being reported.

The slowdown is not affecting the speed at which individuals are notified of their test results.

The local health district saw a spike in cases following Thanksgiving, but recent trends have been difficult to analyze due to the slowdown in the numbers, said Dr. Person.

Most daily reports since the first weekend of the month have shown more than 200 new cases per day in the Tri-Cities area. But new confirmed cases reported on Wednesday dropping to 50, when the slowdown in testing data was noted.

The new cases reported on Thursday included 131 in Benton County and 74 in Franklin County.

The total known cases since the start of the pandemic in the Tri-Cities comes to 18,091, including 10,220 in Benton County and 7,871 in Franklin County.

No recent deaths due to complications of COVID-19 were reported for the Tri-Cities area on Thursday.

Since the start of the pandemic deaths of Tri-Cities area residents from COVID-19 stand at 217, including 146 Benton County residents and 71 Franklin County residents.

The number of people hospitalized locally for treatment of COVID-19 dropped from a fall and winter high of 81 patients as of Tuesday to 76 on both Wednesday and Thursday.

They still accounted for nearly 20% of all patients in hospitals in Richland, Kennewick, Pasco and Prosser.

The Washington state Department of Health has set a goal of fewer than 10% of hospital patients being treated for COVID-19 to ensure adequate capacity.

Washington state

The Washington state Department of Health reported 1,681 new cases of COVID-19 and 89 deaths Wednesday.

As of Wednesday, DOH began adding people who have tested positive for COVID-19 using an antigen test to its daily case total. About 5% of case totals come from the antigen test, said state health officer Kathy Lofy.

Statewide totals from the illness caused by the coronavirus are at 214,265 cases and 3,042 deaths. The case total includes 7,671 cases listed as probable. Washington’s population is estimated at about 7.6 million, according to U.S. Census figures from July 2019. The DOH revises previous case and death counts daily.

One hundred twenty-one people with confirmed cases of COVID-19 were admitted to Washington state hospitals on Nov. 27, the most recent date with complete data. Preliminary reports indicate average daily admittances were 117 in early December.

Approximately 14.1% (1,233) of all staffed adult acute care hospital beds were occupied by COVID-19 patients on Wednesday. In the state’s intensive care units, 22.9% (279) of staffed adult beds were occupied by suspected and confirmed COVID-19 patients.

On Dec. 5, the most recent date with confirmed molecular testing data, 16,023 specimens were collected statewide, with 10.6% testing positive. The average positive test rate for the seven days prior was 12.3%. More than 3.4 million tests have been conducted in Washington.

King County continues to have the highest numbers in Washington, with 55,673 cases and 936 deaths. Spokane County is second in cases, with 22,429. Snohomish County has the second-highest number of deaths at 330.

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

For the past seven days, Washington had a case rate of 33.8 per 100,000 people. The national rate for the same period is 64.6 per 100,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Oklahoma has the highest rate in the United States, at 168.1. Hawaii is the lowest, at 7.8.

There have been more than 16.9 million confirmed coronavirus cases and 307,076 deaths from the virus in the United States as of Wednesday afternoon, according to Johns Hopkins University. The United States has the highest number of reported cases and deaths of any nation.

More than 1.6 million people have died from the disease worldwide. Global cases exceed 74 million.

As of Wednesday afternoon, 410 doses of coronavirus vaccine had been administered in Washington.

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

This story was originally published December 17, 2020 at 2:17 PM.