Tri-Cities COVID cases plateauing at worrisome level. 146 new cases reported

The Tri-Cities area has 146 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, an increase from earlier in the week, the Benton Franklin Health District reported Thursday.

There were 105 new cases reported on Wednesday and an average of just 84 new cases per day over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend.

The Thursday new case count was closer to last week’s daily average of 152 cases.

“We are still seeing that numbers are actually pretty high, but they are plateauing down a little bit,” said Heather Hill, communicable diseases program manager from the Benton Franklin Health District, speaking on the Kadlec on Call podcast.

“We are just about through that post-holiday time now where we would have seen a significant spike,” she said.

There is concern that new cases have plateaued at a high rate, however, indicating “there is still a lot of COVID circulating within our community,” she said.

The new Tri-Cities area case rate, as measured over the last two weeks of complete data, continue to drop slowly this week but not to levels reported earlier in the month.

Benton County had 672 new cases confirmed per 100,000 people over the two weeks ending Jan. 14, the health district reported on Thursday.

That’s down from the case rate of 683 reported Wednesday. However, rates in the 500s were reported for the first 11 days of the month.

Franklin County had 733 new cases confirmed per 100,000 over the two weeks ending Jan. 14.

That’s down from the case rate of 757 reported Wednesday and getting closer to the lowest case rate reported this month of 706.

Case rates give a snapshot of a longer period than daily new case numbers, and they are based on when a person sought testing or when symptoms appeared, rather than when positive case results were reported to public health agencies.

Local hospitals are treating 57 patients for COVID-19. Patient counts have been in the 50s and 60s all month.

The 57 patients accounted for 13% of the 424 people in the Richland, Kennewick, Pasco and Prosser hospitals.

The Benton Franklin Health District is reporting recent deaths only once a week, on Fridays.

The COVID death toll for the Tri-Cities area stands at 249, including 166 deaths of Benton County residents and 83 deaths of Franklin County residents. Sixteen of the deaths were announced this month.

The new cases reported Thursday included 98 in Benton County and 48 in Franklin County for a total of 23,082 cases confirmed in the bicounty area since the start of the pandemic.

COVID vaccines

Public health officials are urging people newly eligible for COVID vaccinations under Washington state restrictions to practice patience until more supplies are available.

The challenge for the Tri-Cities area is that people first eligible to receive the vaccine — health care workers and residents and employees of long-term care homes for the elderly — are still being vaccinated, said Dr. Amy Person at the Benton Franklin Health District Board meeting Wednesday.

The first step for those newly eligible should be to check with their normal health care provider, preferably by looking on their website so as not to tie up their already busy phone lines, to learn about their plans for vaccinating patients against COVID.

Kadlec, for example, was telling its clinic patients that they would be contacted about where and how to schedule a vaccine appointment when they are eligible.

Kadlec, with the Benton Franklin Health District and Tri-Cities Community Health, scheduled a vaccine clinic in Richland on Friday but all appointment times were claimed within 30 minutes of the clinic being announced.

This week eligibility for the vaccine was expanded to include people 65 or older and people 50 and older who live in certain multigenerational households.

Washington residents can check their eligibility for a vaccine at FindYourPhaseWA.org.

The Washington state Department of Health and Washington National Guard are working to open a mass COVID vaccine clinic at the Benton County Fairgrounds in Kennewick for regional use as soon as next week.

Information about whether or how people may sign up in advance for vaccination there has not been released, as organizers work to prepare the site.

Other vaccine events also are being planned in the Tri-Cities area, Hill said.

Washington state

The Washington state Department of Health reported 2041 new cases of COVID-19 Wednesday. No deaths were reported due to data processing issues, DOH said.

Statewide totals from the illness caused by the coronavirus are 294,017 cases and 3,940 deaths. Those numbers are up from 291,976 cases Tuesday. The case total includes 12,759 cases listed as probable. DOH revises previous case and death counts daily.

Washington’s population is estimated at about 7.6 million, according to U.S. Census figures from July 2019.

As of Jan. 1, the date with the most recent complete data, 131 people with confirmed cases of COVID-19 were admitted to Washington state hospitals.

Preliminary reports indicate average daily hospital admissions were 112 in early January.

Out of the state’s total staffed intensive care unit beds (1,192), approximately 78.7% (938) were occupied by patients Wednesday. Of those staffed ICU beds, 20.4% (243) held suspected and confirmed COVID-19 patients.

For the past seven days, Washington had a case rate of 25.2 per 100,000 people. Six states were lower.

The national rate for the same period was 60.1 per 100,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Arizona has the highest rate in the United States at 97.4. Hawaii is the lowest at 8.6.

According to DOH, 335,836 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in Washington.

As of Wednesday, 608,325 doses had been delivered to state providers and 88,725 had been delivered for the CDC’s long-term care vaccination program. Of those delivered doses, 48.1% had been administered.

Currently approved vaccines require two shots for maximum effectiveness.

On the national level, 35.9 million doses have been distributed and 16.5 million shots of the approved vaccines have been given, according to CDC statistics. The population of the United States is approximately 328 million.

On Jan. 1, the most recent date with confirmed testing data, 5,073 specimens were collected statewide, with 15.5% testing positive.

The average positive test rate for the seven days prior was 10%. More than 4.2 million tests have been conducted in Washington. The test numbers reflect only polymerase chain reaction tests, which are administered while the virus is presumably still active in the body.

Cases by county

King County continues to have the highest numbers in Washington, with 74,077 cases and 1,166 deaths. Pierce County is second in cases, with 31,474. Snohomish County has the second-highest number of deaths at 444.

After Pierce, the counties with the most cases are Spokane, Snohomish, Yakima, Clark, Benton and Franklin counties. If Benton and Franklin counties were considered together, they would rank fifth for cases.

This story was originally published January 21, 2021 at 1:40 PM.