Franklin COVID cases soar 410% in a week. Up 208% in Benton County

New cases of COVID-19 in the Tri-Cities are skyrocketing, as the omicron variant spreads across Eastern Washington.

Hospitals are reporting more patients, and public health officials are concerned about staffing not only medical facilities but also other businesses as more people fall ill.

On Wednesday the Benton Franklin Health District reported 372 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the two counties.

That brings average daily cases reported starting with the New Year’s Day three-day weekend in the Tri-Cities area to 253 per day.

Over the past two weeks new cases in Benton County have increased 94% and in Franklin County they have in creased 105%, said Heather Hill, , infectious disease supervisor for the Benton Franklin Health District, speaking on the Kadlec on Call podcast Wednesday.

The rise over the last week has been even more dramatic, with new cases up 208% in Benton County and 410% in Franklin County, she said.

Public health officials now are seeing cases tied to athletic events and holiday gatherings.

The free public testing sites for COVID-19 in Richland and at Columbia Basin College in Pasco are getting more traffic and seeing more positive test results, she said.

At the CBC site off Argent Road about 10% of results are positive and at the 975 George Washington Way site in Richland about 8% of results are positive.

Information on the two sites is posted at covid19.bfhd.wa.gov/testing-sites.

Hill said she expects the number of hospital patients to continue to increase due to the lag in time for increasing numbers of infected people to become sick enough to need hospitalization.

On Wednesday, 41 patients were hospitalized for COVID-19 treatment at the Richland, Kennewick, Pasco and Prosser hospitals. That’s up from a recent low of 15 in mid December and 31 at the start of this week.

Public health officials believe the spike in cases is due to the omnicron variant, which has been slower to spread in Eastern Washington than the Seattle area.

Genetic sequencing to identify variants takes several weeks, creating a lag in information about which variant is circulating. But the rapid rise in cases would indicate that the highly transmissible omnicron variant is on the rise in the Tri-Cities area, Hill said.

Symptoms of the omicron variant may be mild, but still quite uncomfortable, in people who are fully vaccinated, Hill said.

Unvaccinated people are more likely to have severe symptoms, including trouble breathing, that require treatment in a hospital.

Although the omnicron is generally milder than the delta variant that has dominated Tri-Cities area cases in recent months, the increased number of new cases could affect the Tri-Cities workforce.

Businesses may not be able to keep staffing up because workers are home sick with COVID-19, are caring for sick children or other family members, or are quarantining because of exposure to the virus, Hill said.

Younger patients

Kadlec Regional Medical Center in Richland is concerned about keeping staff healthy and on the job as the community’s new case numbers increase, said Kirk Harper, the chief nursing and chief operating officer for Kadlec, during the Kadlec on Call podcast.

The majority of Kadlec’s COVID patients are now being treated as acute care patients, but as of Wednesday five of the hospital’s 12 intensive care unit patients were there for treatment of COVID-19 with ventilators.

The patients were younger than the hospital ICU was treating earlier in the pandemic, said Dr. Phani Kantamneni, medical director of the Kadlec ICU, on Kadlec on Call.

Wednesday they were ages 40 to 66, he said. Some had underlying health conditions such as obesity, diabetes and hypertension.

The hospital’s COVID-19 patients had doubled in the last week and could double again due to the highly contagious nature of the omicron variant, he said.

The omicron variant may be less likely to make people ill enough to be hospitalized, but the large number of people infected will increase hospitalizations, he said.

His biggest concern is the low rate of COVID-19 vaccination in the Tri-Cities, he said.

He rarely sees patients who are vaccinated against the virus who are sick enough to end up in the ICU, he said.

The rate of new COVID-19 vaccinations in the Tri-Cities slowed to an increase of 0.2% over the last week, Hill said.

In Washington state, 63% of residents are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, but that drops to 52% in Benton County and 47% in Franklin County, according to Washington state Department of Health data.

Getting vaccinated may not prevent you from getting the omicron variant of COVID-19, but it likely will keep you from getting severely ill or dying from it, Hill said.

The Tri-Cities also needs to practice other preventive measures, including wearing masks in public, maintaining social distance and avoiding large gatherings, she said.

This story was originally published January 6, 2022 at 12:34 PM.