COVID-19 Update: New Secretary of State Steve Hobbs implements vaccine mandate

On Tues­day, Jan­u­ary 4th, Wash­ing­ton’s newest exec­u­tive depart­ment offi­cer Steve Hobbs extend­ed Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee’s COVID-19 state work­er vac­cine man­date to cov­er the Office of the Sec­re­tary of State, which he now leads, break­ing with his pre­de­ces­sor Kim Wyman’s deci­sion not to require employ­ees to be vac­ci­nat­ed. NPI com­mends this deci­sion and thanks Sec­re­tary Hobbs for act­ing to pro­tect lives and health and strength­en our state’s response to COVID-19.

At a news con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, Gov­er­nor Inslee announced that the state Depart­ment of Health has ordered five and a half mil­lion at-home tests. He also not­ed that eight hun­dred thou­sand such tests have already been received and that the remain­der will like­ly be received with­in the next week. In addi­tion, the state will tap into its per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment inven­to­ry with plans to dis­trib­ute rough­ly 10 mil­lion KN95 and sur­gi­cal masks in the com­ing weeks.

This is all in response to the lat­est omi­cron-fueled wave of the pandemic.

Schools will be the pri­ma­ry ben­e­fi­cia­ries of these orders, but a por­tion of each sup­ply of tests will be made avail­able to com­mu­ni­ties where access can some­times be some­where between prob­lem­at­ic and difficult.

Dur­ing the news con­fer­ence, Gov­er­nor Inslee said: “We have to do every­thing we can to main­tain as much in-per­son instruc­tion as pos­si­ble, which this wave of cas­es will make more dif­fi­cult… Stu­dents have lost too much already dur­ing this pan­dem­ic. That is why we are focused heav­i­ly on mak­ing sure tests, masks, and boost­ers are read­i­ly avail­able for our school staff and students.”

The state will also be part­ner­ing with CareEvo­lu­tion and Ama­zon to cre­ate a new web por­tal where fam­i­lies can order tests to be deliv­ered to their homes at no charge. The por­tal is expect­ed to launch with­in the next two to three of weeks.

Final­ly, efforts are under­way to expand access to COVID-19 vac­cine boost­er shots. The governor’s office said a FEMA mobile vac­ci­na­tion site in Auburn recent­ly tripled its through­put to 1,500 shots a day. Anoth­er high-vol­ume vac­cine site is sched­uled to open in North­west Wash­ing­ton lat­er in the month.

Mean­while:

• Port­land-area schools are respond­ing to their state Depart­ment of Health’s rec­om­men­da­tions to mit­i­gate the rise in omi­cron-spe­cif­ic COVID-19 cas­es and are begin­ning to imple­ment new rules;
• British Colum­bia is con­sid­er­ing remote-access edu­ca­tion in response to like­ly staff short­ages at schools;
• … and health offi­cials in Ida­ho are con­cerned that, with the end of mask man­dates in most pub­lic schools with the start of the end of year hol­i­days, there could be a sig­nif­i­cant rise in cases.

Here’s where to go in Wash­ing­ton State, Ore­gon, Ida­ho and British Colum­bia to get a COVID-19 test if rapid at-home tests are unavail­able to you.

The hard, cold numbers (plus vaccinations)

Wash­ing­ton has had 903,372 cas­es and 9,968 attrib­ut­able deaths.

The state has the forty-sev­enth worst infec­tion rate among the fifty states, the Dis­trict of Colum­bia and Puer­to Rico per mil­lion in population.

The state has the forty-sixth worst death rate among the fifty states, the Dis­trict of Colum­bia and Puer­to Rico per mil­lion in population.

9,958,651 tests have been recorded.

• Dos­es of vac­cine dis­trib­uted to the state: 13,915,795
• Dos­es admin­is­tered: 11,268,717 (80.98%)

Ore­gon has had 441,648 cas­es and 5,719 attrib­ut­able deaths.

The state has the fifti­eth worst infec­tion rate among the fifty states, the Dis­trict of Colum­bia and Puer­to Rico per mil­lion in population.

The state has the forty-fifth worst death rate among the fifty states, the Dis­trict of Colum­bia and Puer­to Rico per mil­lion in population.

8,802,957 tests have been recorded.

• Dos­es of vac­cine dis­trib­uted to the state: 7,953,005
• Dos­es admin­is­tered: 6,193,364 (77.87%)

Ida­ho has had 323,965 cas­es and 4,192 attrib­ut­able deaths.

The state has the twen­ty-eighth worst infec­tion rate among the fifty states, the Dis­trict of Colum­bia and Puer­to Rico per mil­lion in population.

The state has the thir­ty-fourth worst death rate among the fifty states, the Dis­trict of Colum­bia and Puer­to Rico per mil­lion in population.

2,469,916 tests have been recorded.

• Dos­es of vac­cine dis­trib­uted to the state: 2,741,310
• Dos­es admin­is­tered: 1,881,077 (68.62%)

British Colum­bia has had 270,508 cas­es and 2,427 attrib­ut­able deaths.

5,161,935 tests have been recorded.

British Colum­bia has the sev­enth worst infec­tion rate and the sixth worst death rate among the thir­teen Cana­di­an provinces and ter­ri­to­ries per hun­dred thou­sand pop­u­la­tion. (If it were an Amer­i­can state, it would be fifty-third and fifty-third, respec­tive­ly, out of fifty-three.)

• Dos­es of vac­cine dis­trib­uted to the province: 10,284,212
• Dos­es admin­is­tered: 9,502,325 (92.39%)

That does it for this install­ment of COVID-19 Update. Stay safe and well!