COVID case drop may be stalling in part of Tri-Cities area

The Tri-Cities area has 118 new COVID-19 cases, the Benton Franklin Health District said Monday.

More than half of those are in Franklin County, despite it having fewer than half as many people as Benton County.

The Washington state Department of Health’s statewide situation report released last week said most of the states’ medium-size counties, including Benton, have had a continuing, but slowing, rate of decline in cases since the first week of January.

But the drop in Franklin County new cases seems to have flattened, it said.

The cases reported Monday were for three days, including the weekend, and came to an average of 39 new cases per day for both counties.

Last week 43 cases per day on average were reported, continuing a bi-county drop in new cases from 46 a day the preceding week and 64, 76 and 94 cases a day the weeks before that.

The new cases reported on Monday included 61 in Franklin County and 57 in Benton County.

Since the start of the pandemic Franklin County has had 10,935 COVID cases. It has a larger percentage than Benton County of essential agriculture and food processing workers who are at higher risk of infection because of their working conditions.

Benton County has had 14,621 cases, for a total of 25,556 cases that have been confirmed with positive test results for the coronavirus in both counties.

The most recent new COVID-19 case rates for the two counties are down.

Benton County dropped to 199 cases per 100,000 people for the two weeks ending Feb. 22. It is the most recent case rate available as rates are figured by the Washington state Department of Health by backdating to when test samples were collected.

The Washington state Department of Health reported last week that Benton and Franklin counties were then among only nine of the state’s 39 counties with more than 200 cases per 100,000 people for the two-week period ending Feb. 11.

For the two weeks ending Feb. 22, Franklin County had 263 new cases per 100,000 people. It’s new case rate was in the low 300s just a week ago.

Hospital cases, deaths

Hospitalizations and deaths due to COVID-19 are continuing to decline across the state, according to the latest statewide situation report released by the state Department of Health.

In the Tri-Cities area, just 22 people were hospitalized for treatment of COVID-19, the local health district reported on Monday. That’s down from 29 on Friday.

The 22 local COVID patients on Monday accounted for just 6% of the 381 patients in the Richland, Kennewick, Pasco and Prosser hospitals.

The percentage was above 10% just two weeks ago.

Only one recent COVID-19 death in the Tri-Cities area was reported last week, after the area had about a death a day reported from December through mid February.

The Benton Franklin Health District reports deaths once a week, on Fridays.

COVID variant concern

Despite declines seen statewide, the Washington state Department of Health remains concerned about spread of the B.1.1.7 variant, first identified in the United Kingdom.

It spreads more easily than other strains.

“As this variant continues to spread through the state and becomes predominant, case numbers and hospitalizations will likely increase and could strain health care resources,” the Washington state Department of Health said on Friday.

No COVID variants have been reported in Eastern Washington, but limited numbers of specimens from positive test samples collected east of the Cascade Mountains have been genotyped to look for variants.

Much of the genotyping done in Washington state in January and February appears to have been on test samples collected in King, Pierce, Snohomish and Whatcom counties, according to a state report.

It shows no sequencing of test samples collected in Benton and Franklin counties in January and February, although geographic information was not available for 25% of genotyped samples.

Hundreds of test samples were genotyped in Yakima County over the past year without detecting a variant.

Public health officials have said that despite a lack of confirmation through genotyping, they suspect that the variant is in Eastern Washington.

This story was originally published March 1, 2021 at 1:42 PM.