12 more COVID deaths this week in Tri-Cities, even as daily new cases are down

Twelve more residents of the Tri-Cities area have died from complications of COVID-19, the Benton Franklin Health District announced in its weekly report on Friday.

That is up from 10 the previous week and brings deaths announced this month to 80, counting the deaths reported Oct. 1, the first Friday of the month.

The count does not include the Oct. 22 death of a 16-year-old student from Pasco. Franklin County Coroner Curtis McGary has ruled his death as due to COVID-19, but the death has yet to go through the health district’s process to confirm it as a COVID death.

The youngest death reported by the local health district in Friday’s tally was a Benton County man in his 30s.

Other Benton County deaths included a woman in her 40s; a man and woman in their 50s; two men in their 60s; a man and woman in their 80s; and a man in his 90s.

Franklin County deaths included a man in his 60s and a man and a woman in their 70s.

They bring total deaths just this year from COVID in the Tri-Cities area to 284, compared to 255 in 2020, with the first local death of the pandemic reported in March 2020.

The overwhelming majority of deaths this year have been in unvaccinated people, with just 7% of deaths in vaccinated people, said Dr. Amy Person, health officer for Benton and Franklin counties, earlier this month.

In all, since the start of the pandemic 539 residents of the Tri-Cities area have died of complications of COVID-19. They include 364 from Benton County and 175 from Franklin County.

There were 80 deaths reported in October compare to 64 recent deaths in September, not including a summer backlog of 22 reported that month.

That’s far more than the 23 deaths reported in August and 10 in July.

Local public health officials verify that deaths are due to COVID complications by checking for a positive test result and that a coronavirus infection was named as a primary cause of death on the death certificate.

It can take several weeks for the district to receive and reconcile death information for residents due to the reporting processes of medical facilities and coroner offices and the process of issuing and releasing death certificates.

Vaccine breakthrough deaths

In all of Washington state, 8,585 deaths due to the coronavirus have been reported since the start of the pandemic. They include 168 deaths reported over the past week, down from 219 deaths the previous week.

Of the people who have died statewide, 568 were known to be vaccinated against COVID, according to the latest state Washington state Department of Health report issued Oct. 27 on vaccination breakthrough cases. They ranged in age from 35 to 103, with a median age of 80.

At least 212 of them were residents or staff of long-term care facilities.

Information on deaths from breakthrough cases in the Tri-Cities if available only through September, when 16 fully vaccinated Tri-Cities area residents had died. The other 194 deaths during the same time period were in unvaccinated people.

No deaths due to the vaccine have been reported in the Tri-Cities area.

COVID vaccine for children

The Benton Franklin Health District is getting calls from parents already asking about getting children ages 5 to 11 vaccinated as the winter holidays approach and family trips are planned, said Heather Hill, infectious disease supervisor for the Tri-Cities based health district. She spoke on the Kadlec on Call podcast Wednesday.

On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration approved the Pfizer vaccine for children ages 5-11 in doses a third the size given to adults. Two doses about 21 days apart would be needed for full immunity.

The vaccine for children in that age group still must be approved by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and then approved for use in Washington state.

Those final regulatory decisions could be made next week, with the vaccine available soon afterward in the Tri-Cities area.

Approval would make about 680,000 more children in Washington state eligible for the vaccine, with about 30% of their parents eager to get them vaccinated, Hill said.

The risk of a serious illness for a child who catches COVID disease far outweighs that risk of rare serious health effects from the vaccine, she said.

“It is not a rare event to have a bad outcome, even for a child, who catches COVID disease,” she said.

There have been more than 8,300 U.S. children between the ages of 5 to 11 hospitalized with COVID-19, according to The Associated Press, quoting information from the Food and Drug Administration. About a third required intensive care and nearly 100 died.

Tri-Cities COVID cases

The number of new COVID-19 cases continues to drop in Benton and Franklin counties.

“We continue to make excellent progress in getting COVID-19 transmission under control as we see our vaccination rates steadily increasing and our disease rates going down,” said Dr. Person at a Thursday news briefing.

“This is indeed a positive sign that we can look (forward) to our upcoming holidays and the opportunity to spend time with friends and family over Thanksgiving, Christmas and any of the other winter holidays,” she said.

This past week the Benton Franklin Health District reported 401 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 for an average of 57 new cases per day.

That is down from an average of 73 per day last week and 105 the week before.

The new case rate for both counties combined has dropped to 365 new cases per 100,000 over two weeks. That compares to a combined rate of 910 at the end of September.

The Benton County rate Friday was 346 and the Franklin County rate was 404.

The free, public COVID-19 testing sites in the Tri-Cities are reporting both fewer people coming for testing and fewer of the tests coming back with positive results.

The rate of positive test results at the drive-thru testing site at Columbia Basin College off Argent Road in Pasco has dropped to 12% positive in two weeks, Dr. Person said.

The past week ended with 39 people hospitalized in Benton and Franklin counties for treatment of COVID-19. Although the decline in hospitalized patients has slowed, it still is down from 76 people at the end of October.

Public health officials continue to monitor COVID-19 cases needing hospital care closely since hospitals had relatively high patient counts compared to their capacity before the pandemic, Dr. Person said.

The 39 COVID patients on Friday accounted for nearly 10% of all patients at the Richland, Kennewick, Pasco and Prosser hospitals.

Tri-Cities COVID vaccinations

Across Washington state, about 60% of people are fully vaccinated and 65% have received at least one dose of vaccine.

In Benton County, about 49% of people are fully vaccinated, and about 54% of people have had at least one dose of vaccine.

In Franklin County, almost 44% of the population is fully vaccinated and 49% have had at least one dose of vaccine.

Although people can develop immunity either through having COVID-19 or vaccination, there have been some small studies that show that a significant number of people infected may not develop immunity, Dr. Person said.

“At this time the most reliable source of immunity comes from vaccination,” she said. “It is also the safest form of immunity as individuals do not run the risk of hospitalization, long COVID or death due to infection.”

This story was originally published October 30, 2021 at 5:00 AM.