Cowlitz, Pierce and Whitman counties were demoted Monday to Phase 2 status in the state’s reopening plan due to heightened COVID-19 activity. And while Lewis County maintained its Phase 3 status, local public health officials are warning of increasing disease activity.
In a press release Friday, the county reported continued increases in cases, urging residents to stay vigilant of the virus by washing hands, wearing masks and watching their distance. County officials recorded 21 confirmed and probable COVID-19 cases last Friday, bringing the weekly total up to 77 — an increase from 60 the week before and 56 prior to that. The rise, according to officials, may be due to “more transmissible variants of the virus spreading across the state.”
“These numbers are not meant to shock residents, but to show that the COVID-19 virus is still very much around in our community,” the release read.
Last week, The Chronicle reported that local COVID-19 cases were on the rise, that three new congregate outbreaks had emerged, and that the county’s death toll had increased from 51 to 55. The number is now at 56, and the county’s confirmed case count is now at 3,472, as of Monday afternoon.
In an update Monday, Dr. Steven Krager, who acts as Lewis County’s primary health officer, told the county’s board of health that variants of COVID-19 were mutating faster than some officials expected, and that B.1.1.7, the variant that emerged in the United Kingdom, now makes up as many as 35% of all cases in the state.
Although no variants have been detected in Lewis County, Krager noted “that does not mean it’s not spreading.” About 10% of cases in Washington have been sequenced, he said, to determine if they are variants.
“I think the main takeaway for the public is that variants are kind of the dominant strain right now. All of them are a little bit more transmissible, the B.1.1.7 variant is slightly more deadly, and it just emphasizes that we’re not quite out of the woods yet,” he said, noting that case surges are largely due to younger, unvaccinated people statewide.
Krager also cautioned that, if cases and hospitalizations continue to increase, the county could be bumped back into Phase 2.
On Friday, Gov. Jay Inslee announced that counties would need to fail both the hospitalization rate metric and the case rate metric — not just one or the other — in order to fall back to Phase 2. Had Inslee not made the change, Krager noted, Lewis County would have joined Cowlitz, Pierce and Whitman counties.
As of Monday afternoon, Lewis County was at 117 new cases per 100,000, and had a hospitalization rate of 5 per 100,000, the exact threshold between Phase 2 and 3 in the state’s reopening plan. According to incomplete data on the state’s data dashboard, that number is likely to climb.
Local public health officials are also working to operationalize a new walk-through mass vaccination clinic at the empty Sears building at the Lewis County Mall, which members of the Washington National Guard are expected to help run.
Officials hope the new site will help the county keep pace with the more than 1 million Washingtonians who will be newly-eligible for a vaccine starting Thursday. Although Public Health Director JP Anderson originally said the site could be up and running as early as Saturday, contracting issues have since ensued, and Anderson said Monday he was unsure if the timeline was “realistic.”
