Nine Tested for COVID-19 in Lewis County

Lewis County officials say it’s only a matter of time until there are diagnoses of novel coronavirus in Lewis County.

According to Lewis County Director of Public Health and Social Services J.P. Anderson, nine county residents have been tested for the novel coronavirus. Five tests have come back negative, while the department was still awaiting results on the other four Tuesday.

Regardless of the test results, Anderson and other county officials are expecting positive tests in the county soon.

“If we start seeing positives soon, and even if we started to see a lot of positives soon, that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing,” Anderson said following Monday’s Lewis County Board of Health meeting. “If it’s been here for two weeks already, and we’ve had zero deaths, that’s great.”

Anderson added that Public Health wants to start seeing cases in which those who do become sick with the virus ultimately get well and reaffirmed the importance of identifying consistent recovery rates.

“What we see when we look at how many positive cases there are and how many deaths there've been, we see the dominator being how many people have been found to have coronavirus,” Anderson said. “We want that denominator to go way up, so the death rate goes way down.”

Additionally, Anderson said the Public Health department hasn’t been notified of other tests ordered through third parties, such as LabCorp and the University of Washington. Based on conversations he’s had with the state Department of Health, he expects more tests have been ordered.

The department plans on investigating each positive test.

“We want to make sure we’re letting people know what they can do to not transmit it,” Anderson said.

Public Health introduced its adapted Incident Command System for the coronavirus response to the Board of County Commissioners on Monday. According to FEMA, the Incident Command System is a model in which the resources and personnel of a pre-existing department are integrated into a separate structure to “enable effective and efficient domestic incident management.”

Among members of Anderson’s team is Lewis County Health Officer Dr. Rachel Wood, who serves as the system’s safety officer.

She’s been assisting in determining who should undergo testing for the coronavirus in Arbor Health, Morton Hospital and Providence Centralia Hospital’s emergency rooms. As far as her role within the system goes, she said she will continue to pass along “medically accurate information.”

“I fully expect us to have individuals who have positive tests in Lewis County,” Wood said during the meeting. “I think we’re prepared. I think that I’ve heard clinical colleagues say, ‘I just want to get this coronavirus and get it over with so I can get on with my life,’ you know, just as themselves, as an individual person.”

Wood cited the trajectory of flu cases as a potential means to determine whether or not the cases of coronavirus are going to see a decline. She referenced the Center for Disease Control’s normal flu season.

“You can graph out when the (flu) cases are going to occur,” Wood said. “They start going up October, November, December, January and they can be fairly high up through early May. We’ve seen Influenza B cases start to go up at the end of April and early May some years, and then it drops off remarkably as people get outside and out and about. With this novel coronavirus, we’ll know a lot more by the end of June, you know, is it going to fall off?”

As far as the risk for contracting the virus in the Summer months, Wood is “hopeful” it will decrease, but acknowledges that because this is a new virus, she isn’t certain.

“We’ll have to see,” Wood said.

In terms of preparations for cases in Lewis County, Anderson reminded residents their reaction to the coronavirus should be “orderly and calm.” He cited the run on certain items around Washington, such as toilet paper.

Lewis County Commissioner Edna Fund said she hopes the county remains reasonable.

“Take your own health into your own hands,” Fund said following the meeting. “Take what is reasonable and don’t panic … Try those non-pharmaceutical interventions, like wash your hands, you know, limit where you think you’re vulnerable. If you’re an older person and you don’t want to be in crowds, so be it.”

Anderson ended his portion of the presentation by displaying a desktop name plate and stated he and County Manager Erik Martin would place one on their desks for the remainder of the COVID-19 event.

It read, “the bug stops here.”

“We value every single human life in this community,” Anderson said. “We will work diligently to protect the health and safety of Lewis County residents. We’re going to do that. That doesn’t mean an overreaction, that means that we find communication, clear information is how we can do that.”

In total, 24 people in Washington state are known to have died from the disease so far, according to The Seattle Times.