LONGVIEW — Cowlitz County’s COVID-19 caseload jumped by 10 cases over the weekend, bringing the total case count to 112 Monday. But the potential for moving to the next phase of reopening the local economy soon isn’t totally gone.
“We are going to watch the cases today and tomorrow, and we will see what that looks like before we make a recommendation,” County Health Officer Steve Krager said Monday.
Krager will meet with the county Board of Health Tuesday morning to discuss the matter further, he said.
As of Sunday, the county reported 39 new cases per 100,000 people in the last 14 days, he said. The state’s target for moving to phase 3 of Gov. Jay Inslee’s reopening plan is 25 or fewer cases per 100,000.
Still, the county meets most of the state’s other criteria for moving between phases, Krager said. Only one COVID patient is in the hospital here currently, and hospitalizations have remained “pretty flat.” Also, health officials continue to meet the contact tracing timeline for connecting with new patients and their close contacts, Krager said.
“Looking as a whole, there are a lot of things we are meeting, especially in regards to the work we are able to do as a public health department,” Krager said. “The thing we have less control over, like the total number of cases … is something that is rising and something we’ll need to keep a close eye on.”
The total case count rose nearly 10% since Friday. So far none of the new cases traced back to the ilani Casino in Clark County, which reported that an employee tested positive for COVID, or a Cowlitz County nursing home tested last week, Krager said.
An administrator tested positive for the coronavirus, marking the first COVID infection at a Cowlitz County long-term care facility. The employee had no symptoms or contact with residents, according to health officials, and tests on 95 other staff and clients tested at the home were negative. Officials had redo a test for one last person at their home and results are expected Tuesday, said IMT spokesperson Ralph Herrera.
Additional details about the 10 new cases were not available Monday.
“We are still evaluating the data that’s coming in. … Part of what we are looking at is whether those cases are connected to other cases we know about,” Krager said.
Health officials expect the case count to rise as more people in the county get tested. But the recent rise in cases doesn’t appear to be driven by increased testing alone, Krager said.
“One of the pieces of data we look at is how many tests were done during the week total, and how many of those were positive. What we see is that number is rising, as well,” Krager said.
The last week of May about 0.5% of the total tests came back positive. That rate rose to 2.8% the first week of June and to about 5% last week, Krager said. (The county hasn’t received the results for all of the tests done last week, so the rate of positives could change slightly, Krager said.)
It was unclear whether the increase was spurred by the Memorial Day weekend, the Phase 2 reopening, the recent Black Lives Matter protests or some mix of those events.
“More people are mixing and mingling and are probably visiting more people than they had in the past, including family and friends. It’s hard to say how much that has had an effect, but it probably has,” Krager said.
Of the county’s 112 cases, 44 are currently active, according to the county’s COVID-19 Incident Management Team (IMT) data dashboard. The county still has not had a coronavirus death.
One-quarter of the county’s cases involved individuals younger than 30, while just shy of one-third of the cases involve patients 60 or older.
Kelso has the highest rate of COVID cases of all the cities in the county at 167 per 100,000 people. Longview’s rate is 106 per 100,000. Rates per 100,000 were 82 in Kalama, 70 in Silver Lake, 67 in Woodland, 44 in Castle Rock and 0 in Toutle.
“It’s not clear to me why that is the case,” Krager said of the high rate in Kelso. “It could just be slightly higher community spread. It could be where people are working. There is a number of reasons.”
A report released Saturday by the state Department of Health showed a possible uptick of coronavirus transmission in Western Washington, as well as an increase in transmission in the eastern part of the state. The state had more than 25,000 confirmed cases and 1,200 deaths as of Monday.
Case counts had been trending flat in Western Washington, but the most recent report shows small increases in some counties, according to a DOH news release. The report includes possible increases in transmission over Memorial Day weekend but not increases that may have occurred from recent protests.
Eastern Washington is “of greatest concern, particularly in Benton, Franklin, Spokane and Yakima counties,” the report says. If COVID-19 continued to spread at the current rates documented in the report, those counties would see a “substantial” increase of cases. Already they are “in a comparable position to King County at its peak in March,” the report says. In a prepared statement Saturday, Gov. Jay Inslee said the report showed “there is still reason for strong concern in parts of our state.”
“To continue tackling this virus, we must increase testing and mask-wearing, and maintain physical distancing and hospital capacity, as well as target interventions for high-risk populations such as long-term care facilities and indoors, including close proximity workplace operations, such as food processing and agricultural housing,” Inslee said. “This is not the time to give up on efforts to protect ourselves, our families and our communities. We are still in the middle of a pandemic that is continuing to infect and kill Washingtonians.”
