Washington state news still ‘encouraging,’ officials cautiously say at weekly update
Washington state health officials are still seeing good signs in their various COVID data, they said during their weekly update about the state’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Generally the news continues to be encouraging,” Secretary of Health John Wiesman said at the virtual briefing Wednesday. “So we are pleased with that while also being cautious about our progress.”
While masks and social distancing seem to be working, a lot of cases still seem to be coming from social gatherings that aren’t following guidelines, he cautioned.
“If you look at our overall state average we’re still at over 100 cases for every 100,000 population over 14 days, and we really want to get schools open, and ideally we really want to see those numbers drop below 25 cases per 100,000 over 14 days, so we still have a long way to go,” Wiesman said in response to a reporter’s question.
He said when counties started advancing phases under the state’s Safe Start plan it seemed like: “People just kind of let their guard down and felt like: ‘We’re done with this,’ when clearly we weren’t. We have like twice the number of daily cases in this wave than we did the earlier one.”
State Health Officer Dr. Kathy Lofy said: “We do continue to see positive signs in our data.”
She showed a graph of the epidemiologic curve of the number of people testing positive for COVID by the date of illness onset, and said there’s a “nice decline in the number of cases being diagnosed here in Washington over the past two weeks.”
Showing other data, Lofy said: “We do have some counties that are continuing to have sort of an increased number of cases be detected,” such as Walla Walla and Spokane.
Pierce County looks like it might just be starting to turn the corner, she said.
Lofy said that “Our highest rates of disease are still within Central Washington, but we’re happy that some of our Central Washington counties have really seen a decline in their case count.”
There’s also a decrease in emergency room visits of people with symptoms of COVID-19.
“This really suggests that there are fewer people out there who are sick with COVID symptoms,” she said.
Given that the state is still updating its testing data, she showed similar federal data that goes through Aug. 12.
“Our federal colleagues have asked all of the large commercial laboratories, have asked our hospitals and our public health laboratory to report on the number of tests that they are performing and the number of tests that are coming back negative,” she said.
That data shows a seven day average of about 11,000 tests being done a day.
That’s been “fairly flat over the last week or two, which I think is a good sign,” she said.
The seven day rolling average of the positivity rate appears to show a peak about mid July, she said.
She also said she thinks we’re seeing the start of a decline in the number of people hospitalized with COVID.
The number of deaths is still going up, she said, noting that’s “our slowest data source.”
The effective reproductive number in the state, calculated through about the end of July, is estimated to be about 1.
“This means our outbreak is no longer growing, which is a really good sign,” Lofy said. “... We do beleive that this masking order has had an effect on disease transmission here in Washington.”
Reed Schuler, a senior policy advisor with the governor’s office, talked about new Personal Protective Equipment data that’s available online.
That dashboard has figures about what PPE is available and what it has cost. There’s detailed information broken down by the type of PPE and by county. It show what’s been purchased, received and distributed.
“We’re in a much better position for meeting ongoing need than we have been historically,” Schuler said.
Wiesman also reported that the state is still working on transitioning to a new reporting methodology for testing, which he announced last week.
Before the state only reported one negative test if someone tested negative multiple times. Now it will report all negative tests.
Washington’s online COVID-19 Data Dashboard should be updated early next week with the new testing data, Wiesman said.
He also talked about a new proclamation from the governor that requires agricultural employers to do broad COVID-19 testing when they have a significant outbreak.
Wiesman has ordered that workers at Gebbers Farms in Okanogan County be tested, and said there might be a couple other places with outbreaks that meet the threshold for broad testing. Gebbers Farms had more than 120 positive cases at the end of July and three workers have died, he said.
This story was originally published August 19, 2020 at 5:15 PM.
