As Clark County waits to see what Christmas and New Year’s gatherings will do to local COVID-19 case counts, numbers reported Monday continued to show a daily decrease.
Clark County Public Health reported 404 coronavirus cases over the long weekend — an average of 101 infections per day Thursday through Sunday. Public Health did not report cases on Christmas day.
Clark County was averaging close to 150 infections per day at times in November and December, but infections have dipped slightly in recent weeks.
It will likely be two to four weeks before increases from Christmas and New Year’s gatherings manifest in testing. The data so far has showed that Clark County likely dodged major increases from Thanksgiving gatherings.
At one point PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center was predicting a 20 to 40 percent increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations toward the end of the year.
There are 39 COVID-19 patients in both county hospitals as of Monday morning, and four people in the hospital awaiting test results.
COVID-19 positive tests rose from 9.4 percent the week ending Nov. 28, with 8,096 total tests in the county, to 12.27 percent for the week ending Dec. 5, with 8,957 tests. According to the Public Health website, the Washington State Department of Health is working through a backlog of negative COVID-19 test results that may impact the total number of tests and percent positive. The data will be updated to reflect any additional negative test results once the state has finished its data entry.
Active cases dipped to 700 Monday from 814 on Thursday. No new deaths were reported over the long weekend.
Clark County now has 12,668 total cases and 137 confirmed and suspected COVID-19 deaths.
