COVID-19 Update: Rolling, rolling, rolling…

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 here and across the coun­try are work­ing to mitigate.

Wash­ing­ton

The direc­tion of the pan­dem­ic with­in the state has changed while the gen­er­al out­look remains the same.  King, Sno­homish and Pierce coun­ties still have the most cas­es, but now Franklin Coun­ty has a test­ed pos­i­tive rate of 28%, Yaki­ma Coun­ty 26%, Ben­ton Coun­ty 17%, and Grant Coun­ty 11%.

(As a basis of com­par­i­son, King Coun­ty is at 5.8%.)

Franklin Coun­ty present­ly has one of the worst infec­tion rates on the West Coast, while Yaki­ma Coun­ty now has more deaths con­firmed from COVID-19 than Sno­homish Coun­ty, but the lat­ter has dropped its repro­duc­tion rate below one due to an aggres­sive mask campaign.

As was put suc­cinct­ly in a recent KUOW arti­cle, “The trend now is toward younger peo­ple, peo­ple in their 20’s and 30’s.

And as we’ve seen before, there are still racial dis­par­i­ties in who is get­ting COVID-19 in King Coun­ty. Com­pared to white peo­ple, the rate of Covid cas­es is three times high­er for Black peo­ple, five times high­er for Lat­inx peo­ple, and six times high­er for Native Hawai­ian and Pacif­ic Islanders.”  King Coun­ty’s num­bers of infect­ed are at their high­est lev­els since April of this year.

With restric­tions relaxed, more peo­ple are act­ing as if the pan­dem­ic does­n’t exist.  And that has a very detri­men­tal effect.  A phase roll­back for most coun­ties with­in the state is under con­sid­er­a­tion, but at this time the cur­rent pause in reopen­ing the state has been extend­ed through July 28th.

Gov­er­nor Inslee also, as of Mon­day, July 20th, will reduce the num­ber of indi­vid­u­als allowed in social gath­er­ings in Phase 3 Safe Start coun­ties from fifty peo­ple to ten peo­ple. (Phase 2 Safe Start coun­ties may con­tin­ue to have social gath­er­ings of up to five people.)

The munic­i­pal­i­ty of Mount­lake Ter­race, using CARES Act fund­ing from the Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, will be mail­ing two cloth masks to every address with­in its zip code.  This is after hav­ing made avail­able free cloth face masks to low-income res­i­dents at a dri­ve through/walk up event on Mon­day, June 29th.

A num­ber of munic­i­pal­i­ties, such as Belle­vue have either imple­ment­ed or are con­sid­er­ing free mask pick-up pro­grams for their res­i­dents, and these are after King Coun­ty ini­ti­at­ed a free PPE give­away for small busi­ness­es start­ing July 1st.

The North Cen­tral Region­al Library, which includes Chelan, Dou­glas, Fer­ry, Grant, and Okanogan coun­ties, will be increas­ing their WiFi sig­nal to make it more read­i­ly avail­able for use out­side of their libraries.

Oregon

The three-day spe­cial leg­isla­tive ses­sion in Salem, which com­plet­ed on Fri­day, June 26th, pro­vid­ed a num­ber of passed bills regard­ing respond­ing to the pan­dem­ic. On Wednes­day, July 8th, sev­en employ­ees at a gro­cery store in Eugene test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19. As of Sun­day, July 12th, there were 60 active COVID-19 work­place out­breaks in Oregon.

On Mon­day, July 13th, Gov­er­nor Kate Brown fol­lowed the lead of Wash­ing­ton state and required face masks in use for out­door spaces if a per­son can­not stay out­side of six feet from anoth­er person.

Ore­gon also announced a statewide lim­it of ten peo­ple in indoor social gath­er­ings, but that they would not apply to busi­ness­es or to wor­ship services.

Both announce­ments take effect on Wednes­day, July 15th.

As in Wash­ing­ton state, while high-pop­u­la­tion coun­ties such as Mult­nom­ah, Mar­i­on and Wash­ing­ton coun­ties have the most cas­es, rur­al areas such as Umatil­la, Union, Mahleur and Mor­row coun­ties have pos­i­tive test rates of between 15% and 17% The Deschutes Coun­ty Cir­cuit Court is con­sid­er­ing mov­ing to the Deschutes Coun­ty Fair & Expo Cen­ter in Red­mond in order to pro­vide ade­quate phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing while resolv­ing court cases.

Idaho

As of Mon­day, July 13th, the state had sev­en straight days of more than 400 con­firmed cas­es of COVID-19, with 556 con­firmed cas­es on Sat­ur­day, July 11th.  This was fol­lowed by 316 con­firmed cas­es on Tues­day, July 14th, 727 con­firmed cas­es on Wednes­day, July 15th and 688 cas­es on Thurs­day, July 16th.

The Cen­tral Dis­trict Health’s board vot­ed on Tues­day, July 14th, to man­date the wear­ing of face masks and cov­er­ings through­out Ada Coun­ty, join­ing the city of Boise, which did so start­ing July 4th. On the same day, the Ida­ho Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tion report­ed that 40% of the inmates at the Ida­ho State Cor­rec­tion­al Cen­ter at Kuna test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19.

British Colum­bia

The effect of the pan­dem­ic on the provin­cial econ­o­my will be laid out some­time this week or next by Finance Min­is­ter Car­ole James, but how a $1.5 Bil­lion CDN relief fund will be dis­persed may not be made known until August.

A small out­break over the Cana­da Day cel­e­bra­tions in Kelow­na is being assessed and traced to min­i­mize its impact.  Nev­er­the­less twen­ty-one new con­firmed cas­es of COVID-19 hap­pened between July 14th and 15th, and health author­i­ties are con­cerned as the virus “silent­ly cir­cu­lates” with­in the broad­er community.

The hard, cold numbers

Wash­ing­ton state has had 44,559 cas­es and 1,432 attrib­ut­able deaths.

753,174 peo­ple have been tested.

Ore­gon has had 13,510 cas­es and 249 attrib­ut­able deaths.

318,244 peo­ple have been tested.

Ida­ho has had 13,133 cas­es and 114 attrib­ut­able deaths.

139,481 peo­ple have been tested.

British Colum­bia has had 3,170 cas­es and 189 attrib­ut­able deaths.

226,147 peo­ple have been tested.