COVID-19 Update: Vice President Mike Pence shows up to discuss coronavirus response

It’s time for anoth­er install­ment of of our spe­cial series COVID-19 Update, bring­ing you the lat­est devel­op­ments on the nov­el coro­n­avirus out­break that pub­lic health author­i­ties in the Pacif­ic North­west are work­ing dili­gent­ly to con­tain. Unlike some of the non­sense that is unfor­tu­nate­ly cir­cu­lat­ing on social media, all the infor­ma­tion you’ll find here is accu­rate and based on sound science.

Today, COVID-19 updates arrived at a rapid fire pace, and not just from pub­lic agen­cies, but from com­pa­nies and non­prof­its and church­es too. SARS-CoV­‑2 is on every­body’s minds. It is now so firm­ly plant­ed in the local con­scious­ness that the Seat­tle Times has estab­lished a sec­tion on its home­page titled “Coro­n­avirus”.

Today, the Pacif­ic North­west was vis­it­ed by Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence, who Don­ald Trump has unwise­ly put in charge of the regime’s response to the COVID-19 out­break. Pence arrived at Joint Base Lewis McChord (JBLM) on a Unit­ed States Air Force Boe­ing C‑32 at around half past three in the after­noon, and was greet­ed by Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee as he reached the bot­tom of the airstairs.

Inslee is no longer shak­ing hands with peo­ple due to COVID-19 and is instead encour­ag­ing peo­ple to sub­sti­tute hand­shakes with elbow bumps.

He did this with Pence.

After­wards, Pence met with a del­e­ga­tion of state, local, and fed­er­al elect­ed lead­ers from Wash­ing­ton State to dis­cuss the joint inter-agency gov­ern­ment response to COVID-19. Most mem­bers of Con­gress were there along with Inslee.

This meet­ing was fol­lowed by a press conference.

Pence was flanked by Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee and, unusu­al­ly, the state’s entire Unit­ed States House del­e­ga­tion with the notable excep­tion of Den­ny Heck.

You can see in this still all of the House mem­bers lined up from left to right.

Let’s con­tin­ue our roundup with a wel­come announce­ment from Wash­ing­ton State Insur­ance Com­mis­sion­er Mike Krei­dler’s office.

Insur­ance Com­mis­sion­er Mike Krei­dler issued an emer­gency order to Wash­ing­ton state health insur­ers requir­ing them to waive copays and deductibles for any con­sumer requir­ing test­ing for coro­n­avirus (COVID-19). Insur­ers also must:

• Allow a one-time ear­ly refill for pre­scrip­tion drugs.
• Sus­pend any pri­or autho­riza­tion require­ment for treat­ment or test­ing of COVID-19.

In addi­tion, if an insur­er does not have enough med­ical providers in its net­work to pro­vide test­ing and treat­ment for COVID-19, it must allow enrollees to be treat­ed by anoth­er provider with­in a rea­son­able dis­tance at no addi­tion­al cost. The order is effec­tive imme­di­ate­ly and applies to all state-reg­u­lat­ed health insur­ance plans and short-term lim­it­ed dura­tion med­ical plans until May 4th, 2020.

“Con­sumers are right­ly con­cerned about pre­ven­tion, test­ing and pos­si­ble treat­ment,” Krei­dler said. “My emer­gency order pro­vides guid­ance to health insur­ers and should help reas­sure the pub­lic that we will take all nec­es­sary steps to pro­tect them.”

Krei­dler is using pow­ers grant­ed to him fol­low­ing the recent statewide emer­gency that Gov. Jay Inslee declared to pro­tect Wash­ing­ton res­i­dents against the spread of the coronavirus.

When the gov­er­nor issues an emer­gency procla­ma­tion, the com­mis­sion­er can issue an emer­gency order relat­ed to health care cov­er­age to ensure access to care.

The order lasts six­ty days and can be extend­ed by the com­mis­sion­er for an addi­tion­al thir­ty days, as long as the governor’s emer­gency procla­ma­tion remains in effect. Krei­dler urged state res­i­dents with­out health insur­ance to con­tact the Wash­ing­ton Health Ben­e­fit Exchange to deter­mine if they qual­i­fy for free health cov­er­age or a spe­cial enroll­ment for indi­vid­ual health insurance.

Krei­dler also appeared at a news con­fer­ence with Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee at the Capi­tol to advise Wash­ing­to­ni­ans of the issuance of the order. The news con­fer­ence can be watched on demand cour­tesy of TVW.

A few hours lat­er, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son released a state­ment warn­ing Wash­ing­to­ni­ans to be on the look­out for preda­to­ry scams.

Said Fer­gu­son:

“Scam­mers often prey on fear. As the COVID-19 out­break and response con­tin­ue, Wash­ing­to­ni­ans may see peo­ple adver­tis­ing prod­ucts or ser­vices they claim treat or cure the dis­ease. There is no spe­cif­ic antivi­ral treat­ment rec­om­mend­ed for COVID-19 at this time. Any claims that a prod­uct or ser­vice can cure, kill, or destroy COVID-19 are prob­a­bly false, and should be report­ed to our office.”

To file a com­plaint, vis­it the AGO’s web­site.

And now here’s the lat­est bul­letin from Seat­tle-King Coun­ty Pub­lic Health.

Case update

COVID-19 test results have come back from a vari­ety of lab­o­ra­to­ries con­firm­ing 20 new cas­es of COVID-19 in King Coun­ty res­i­dents includ­ing one death in a case pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed by Pub­lic Health. This new death was in a woman in her nineties, hos­pi­tal­ized at Ever­green­Health. She died on 3/3/20. With these twen­ty new results, the total num­ber of cas­es in King Coun­ty is fifty-one. The total num­ber of deaths is ten.

As more lab­o­ra­to­ry capac­i­ty for test­ing comes online, more tests and results will be report­ed. We will no longer be rou­tine­ly pro­vid­ing details about each case.

King County Novel Coronavirus Call Center

• If you are in King Coun­ty and believe you were exposed to a con­firmed case of COVID-19, or if you’re a health­care provider with ques­tions about COVID-19, con­tact our nov­el coro­n­avirus call cen­ter: 206–477-3977.
• The call cen­ter will be open dai­ly from 8:00 AM to 7:00 PM PT.
• For gen­er­al con­cerns and ques­tions about COVID-19, please call the State Nov­el Coro­n­avirus Call Cen­ter at 800–525-0127.

When to seek medical evaluation and advice

• If you have symp­toms like cough, fever, or oth­er res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems, call your health­care provider. Do not go to the emer­gency room. Emer­gency rooms need to be able to serve those with the most crit­i­cal needs.
• If you are hav­ing a med­ical emer­gency, call 9–1‑1.

King Coun­ty has also issued new guid­ance for pub­lic gatherings.

• Peo­ple at high­er risk of severe ill­ness should stay home and away from large groups of peo­ple as much as pos­si­ble, includ­ing pub­lic places with lots of peo­ple and large gath­er­ings where there will be close con­tact with oth­ers. Peo­ple at high­er risk include: 
  • Peo­ple 60 and older
  • Peo­ple with under­ly­ing health con­di­tions includ­ing heart dis­ease, lung dis­ease, or diabetes
  • Peo­ple who have weak­ened immune systems
  • Peo­ple who are pregnant
• Work­places should enact mea­sures that allow peo­ple who can work from home to do so. Tak­ing these mea­sures can help reduce the num­ber of work­ers who come into con­tact with peo­ple with COVID-19 and help min­i­mize absen­teeism due to illness. 
  • Some peo­ple need to be at work to pro­vide essen­tial ser­vices of great ben­e­fit to the com­mu­ni­ty. They can also take steps in their work­places to min­i­mize risk.
• If you can fea­si­bly avoid bring­ing large groups of peo­ple togeth­er, con­sid­er post­pon­ing events and gatherings.
• Pub­lic Health is not rec­om­mend­ing clos­ing schools at this time unless there has been a con­firmed case in the school.
• All peo­ple should not go out when they are sick.
• Avoid vis­it­ing hos­pi­tals, long term care facil­i­ties, or nurs­ing homes to the extent pos­si­ble. If you need to go, lim­it your time there and keep six feet away from patients.

Mean­while, north of the Cana­di­an bor­der, they’ve got more COVID-19 cases.

VICTORIA — Adri­an Dix, Min­is­ter of Health, and Dr. Bon­nie Hen­ry, B.C.‘s provin­cial health offi­cer, have issued the fol­low­ing joint state­ment regard­ing updates on the nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) in British Columbia:

“We are announc­ing eight new cas­es of COVID-19 for a total of 21 cas­es in British Colum­bia. The indi­vid­u­als are in the Van­cou­ver Coastal and Fras­er Health regions and were con­firmed pos­i­tive based on BC Cen­tre for Dis­ease Con­trol testing.”

“Cas­es 14, 15, 16 and 17 are close con­tacts of case 10. They are a man in his twen­ties, a man in his thir­ties, a woman in her fifties and a woman in her sixties.”

“Cas­es 18 and 19 are a woman in her fifties and a man in his six­ties who reside in a sin­gle house­hold. They recent­ly returned from Iran.”

“Case 20 is a woman in her fifties who fre­quent­ly trav­els to Metro Van­cou­ver from the Seat­tle, Wash­ing­ton area. She is stay­ing with fam­i­ly in the Fras­er Health region.”

“Case 21 is a woman in her fifties with no recent trav­el his­to­ry who resides in the Fras­er Health region.”

“Four B.C. patients have now ful­ly recov­ered and one patient remains in crit­i­cal con­di­tion in care at hos­pi­tal. The remain­ing indi­vid­u­als with COVID-19 are in iso­la­tion at home with sup­port and mon­i­tor­ing from pub­lic health teams.”

“Pub­lic health teams con­tin­ue to iden­ti­fy and noti­fy close con­tacts of all active cas­es. They will be sup­port­ed to self-iso­late for four­teen days and are being mon­i­tored for symptoms.”

“We are con­tin­u­ing wide­spread test­ing by screen­ing British Columbians and trav­ellers with symp­toms, along with their close con­tacts, to iden­ti­fy cas­es of COVID-19 and take imme­di­ate action as we have seen today.”

To the south, Ore­gon report­ed no new COVID-19 cases.

” Tonight we are not report­ing test results due to a large vol­ume of sam­ples sub­mit­ted to the Ore­gon State Pub­lic Health Lab­o­ra­to­ry,” state offi­cials explained. “We will share results tomorrow.”

Regard­ing new guide­lines for test­ing, the agency said:

Since the out­break of COVID-19, OHA [Ore­gon Health Author­i­ty] has relied on CDC guid­ance about who to test for the virus, which includes focus­ing on indi­vid­u­als expe­ri­enc­ing symp­toms of the virus — fever, cough, short­ness of breath —  and who either trav­eled from main­land Chi­na or had close con­tact with a con­firmed case in the four­teen days before they became sick.

Today, the CDC expand­ed that test­ing guid­ance to give clin­i­cians more dis­cre­tion to deter­mine whether to seek test­ing for COVID-19 for patients. That guid­ance encour­ages clin­i­cians to use their judg­ment in decid­ing whether a patient has signs and symp­toms of COVID-19, and whether that patient needs to be tested.

OHA is adapt­ing the new CDC guid­ance by encour­ag­ing clin­i­cians to pur­sue COVID-19 test­ing when eval­u­a­tion of hos­pi­tal­ized patients who test neg­a­tive for influen­za indi­cates like­li­hood of viral pneumonia.

OHA guid­ance will also pro­vide a stream­lined process for clin­i­cians to request a test from the Ore­gon State Pub­lic Health Lab­o­ra­to­ry. This includes cre­at­ing an online form for OHA epi­demi­ol­o­gists to elec­tron­i­cal­ly approve test­ing requests if the clinician’s patient meets the test­ing criteria.

Final­ly, the Seat­tle Times has a sev­er­al good sto­ries about how the nov­el coro­n­avirus is affect­ing life around these parts. Read this sto­ry to under­stand why Northshore School Dis­trict is clos­ing all of its facil­i­ties for two weeks and shift­ing to a remote learn­ing set­up. Read this sto­ry to find out how local church­es are chang­ing their litur­gi­cal ser­vices to keep peo­ple safe. And read this sto­ry to learn how upcom­ing sport­ing events could be affect­ed by COVID-19.