Thurston County Ends Week With 16 New COVID-19 Cases; Overall Total Rises to 170

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Thurston County ended the week with 16 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, including five that were announced on Saturday, according to Thurston County Public Health and Social Services.

No new cases were announced on Sunday. The five that were announced Saturday were a woman in her 80s, a man in his 60s, a man and woman in their 50s and a man in his 40s, the data show.

One of those cases is tied to recent outbreaks at either Olympics West Retirement Inn in Tumwater or Infinite Care Adult Family Home in Lacey, according to the county.

County officials did not disclose the specific location for the one case.

Although the county ended the week with no new cases, the 16 cases for the week, combined with 23 the week before, gives the county a two-week total of 39 cases.

That's significant because the county was partly allowed to move to Phase 2 of the governor's phased reopening of the economy because it was previously under the threshold of 29 cases over a two-week period. Now, the county has exceeded that number by 10 cases.

Public Health Director Schelli Slaughter could not be reached Sunday.

However, that wasn't the only reason the county was allowed to advance to Phase 2, according to The Olympian's previous reporting.

"That being said, a part of us being able to advance to Phase 2 was that we demonstrated that we had the capacity and capability to respond to a situation like this, and I'm confident that we do," Slaughter previously told The Olympian.



Overall, the county has reported 170 cases since it began tracking the novel coronavirus in early March. Of that total, 130 people have either recovered or are recovering and there has been one death, giving the county 39 active cases.

In the region

-- Pierce County announced 14 more cases on Sunday, pushing its overall total to 2,050 cases with 80 deaths.

-- Lewis County has 37 cases and three deaths.

-- Mason County has 36 cases and one death.

-- Grays Harbor County now has 19 cases.

Around the state, nation and world

Washington state is home to more than 23,000 cases and 1,153 deaths, according to the state Department of Health.

In the U.S., 1.9 million cases of the disease have been reported and 110,000 have died, Johns Hopkins University data show. Globally, 6.9 million people have been afflicted and 400,000 have died, the data show.