Pierce County reports 14 new COVID-19 cases
Pierce County reported 14 new COVID-19 cases Saturday. No additional deaths were reported.
The county’s totals are now at 1,851 cases and 73 deaths since the outbreak began, up from 1,840 cases Friday.
Daily case totals can change as the county receives new information about cases, finds duplicate data or is assigned cases originally attributed to other counties.
The county’s data estimates 1,308 of the confirmed cases have recovered, while 543 are still assumed active.
There have been 22,969 tests conducted in the county as of May 21 with positive results at 7.5%, according to the state Department of Health.
That total does not include negative tests from long-term care facilities or the 76,000 tests not yet assigned to a county.
Saturday’s geographical case totals are listed below with Friday’s totals in parentheses:
▪ Bonney Lake: 47 (46)
▪ Central Pierce County: 134 (133)
▪ East Pierce County: 51 (no change)
▪ Edgewood/Fife/Milton: 86 (87)
▪ Frederickson: 64 (no change)
▪ Gig Harbor area: 52 (no change)
▪ Graham: 54 (no change)
▪ JBLM: No longer reported
▪ Key Peninsula: 7 (no change)
▪ Lake Tapps/Sumner area: 46 (no change)
▪ Lakewood: 192 (191)
▪ Parkland: 102 (no change)
▪ Puyallup: 132 (131)
▪ South Hill: 102 (100)
▪ South Pierce County: 38 (no change)
▪ Southwest Pierce County: 21 (no change)
▪ Spanaway: 64 (63)
▪ Tacoma: 591 (586)
▪ University Place: 60 (no change)
▪ Unknown: 8 (no change)
Daily reports include cases received by 11:59 p.m. the previous day.
Pierce County may still be ineligible to move into Phase 2 of the state’s reopening plan by June 1, when the current stay-at-home order is set to expire.
Per the state Department of Health, counties must “have an average of less than 10 new cases per 100,000 residents over a 14-day period,” among other criteria, to be considered eligible to move into the second phase. Counties must also install plans for testing, investigations if further outbreaks occur and isolating and quarantine practices to move on.
The second phase of the four-phase plan includes allowing outdoor recreational contact, and small social and spiritual gatherings with people from other households, allows hair and nail salons to reopen, restaurants to operate at 50% capacity and retail outlets to resume some in-store purchases, among other business reopenings.
“We are making good progress as we continue to open Washington in segments,” Gov. Jay Inslee said in a statement Friday. “Currently, one-third of our state is now eligible to move into Phase 2. We are hard at work to determine next steps as we move closer to the May 31 expiration of my current order. As I have repeatedly said before, these are decisions that are driven by public health data and science, not the calendar.”
Inslee wrote Friday on Twitter he wanted to make it clear that “not every county will be ready to move to Phase 2 on June 1,” citing high infection rates.
Pierce County currently falls short of the qualifications, and daily case count trends suggest it will not meet the qualifications by the end of May.
A blog post published Friday by the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department noted the progress the county has made in slowing the spread of COVID-19 — the daily case count is steadily decreasing — but the department’s Director of Communicable Disease Nigel Turner wrote the county “would need to have fewer than 90 cases over a 14-day period to qualify” to move into Phase 2, given its population.
“That means an average of about six new cases a day,” he wrote.
During the most recent 14-day period, the county has confirmed 196 new cases — or 14 cases per day.
This story was originally published May 23, 2020 at 2:28 PM.
