Tri-Cities child suffers this year’s 1st COVID-linked rare illness. Another adult dies
More people were hospitalized last week due to COVID-19 and another death was reported, but other warning signs held fairly steady in the Tri-Cities area.
The latest death was a Benton County man in his 90s, the second COVID death announced in November.
Last month there were eight deaths reported in the Benton Franklin Health District, and there were 11 to 12 deaths announced in each of the three months before that.
The most recent deaths bring the total for Benton and Franklin counties since the start of the pandemic to 737.
Public health officials are keeping a close eye on analyses of samples from wastewater from Tri-Cities municipal plants to gauge the level of coronavirus circulating in the Tri-Cities.
The concentration increased slightly this past week, but remained at levels seen last spring that were well below the summer peak from the omicron variant of the coronavirus.
The number of people hospitalized in the Richland, Kennewick, Pasco and Prosser hospitals for treatment of COVID-19 for the most recent week of data available increased to 15. That was the highest number reported in recent weeks. But a month ago 20 people were reported hospitalized.
The known rate of COVID-19 in the Tri-Cities area remained steady at 33 cases per 100,000 people over a week. However, that data does not include the positive results from home tests.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is listing all but one Washington state County as having “low” COVID community levels. The exception is Whatcom County in northwest Washington with a community level of “medium.”
Tri-Cities MIS-C cases
The Washington state Department of Health reported that the number of cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C, increased to 10 in Benton and Franklin counties since the start of the pandemic after a case was reported in Benton County.
It was the only case reported to date in 2022 in the Tri-Cities area.
There have been three cases reported in Benton County in 2021 and 2022 and seven cases in Franklin County in 2020 and 2021.
MIS-C is a rare condition in children with COVID-19 in which different body parts can become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes or gastrointestinal organs
Parents are advised to watch for symptoms such as fever or headache, abdominal pain with or without diarrhea, fatigue and respiratory symptoms such as shortness of breath, according Dr. John McGuire, chief of the Division of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine at Seattle Children’s Hospital, where many of Washington state’s MIS-C patients are sent for treatment.
Richland School District reported four students and 1 staff testing positive for COVID-19 for the first week of November; Pasco School District reported seven student cases and four staff cases; and Kennewick reported 13 student cases and three staff cases.
Lourdes Urgent Care
Lourdes Urgent Care in Pasco has reopened on Sundays for the first time since before the pandemic.
The clinic at 5304 N. Road 68 is seeing patients from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Sundays for issues such as allergies, colds, flu, infections, minor illnesses, sprains, wounds, burns and sports physicals.
Walk-ins are allowed seven days a week, but patients also can book an appointment up to 24 hours in advance at YourLourdes.com/Online-Scheduling.