SPOKANE — The spread of COVID-19 in Washington seems to be plateauing, and potentially trending downward, but health officials still are cautious, especially as the holidays near.
Statistical models show the number of positive tests, deaths and total case counts are starting to plateau, state epidemiologist Dr. Scott Lindquist said in a Wednesday news briefing.
“I don’t want us to think even in this downturn that we are out of the woods,” Lindquist said. “We remain in a very high, precarious situation still in Washington state.”
The most recent peak in case counts from November and early December is still significantly higher than the previous peak in March, Lindquist said. Most cases are coming from people between 20 and 50 years old while most deaths are coming from people older than that.
It could be one of the reasons Washington isn’t experiencing such high death count increases as in other states, Lindquist said.
“Our efforts to avoid a post-Thanksgiving spike seemed to have worked,” deputy secretary of health Lacy Fehrenbach said. “We need to do the same thing for the remaining holidays.”
The state is still in the first half of the pandemic, said Secretary of Health Dr. Umair Shah, who officially started on Monday.
“This is a long road,” Shah said.
As more people begin to get vaccinated, Shah said he has “a lot of hope and optimism” for what the second half of the pandemic will look like. However, the state is still far from getting vaccinations out to the general public.
So far, 30,000 high-risk health care workers have been vaccinated. The state allocated 44,850 additional Pfizer-BioNTech doses and 127,900 Moderna doses this week.
Many of the week’s shipments arrived Wednesday. The number of doses the state receives will be updated on a week-by-week basis.
Those doses will continue to be used to vaccinate those in the first prioritization category, which includes high-risk health care workers, first responders and those in longterm care facilities.
