TPCHD leader warns of rising COVID cases after some county leaders call for delay in phase metrics
Story has been updated with comment from Dr. Anthony Chen, director of health for the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department.
City and county leaders on Friday doubled down on their fight against the potential rollback to Phase 2 for Pierce County next week, as determined by the state’s Roadmap to Recovery — but the county’s leading public health official later sounded a note of caution.
In a letter sent Friday directed to Gov. Jay Inslee, Speaker of the House Laurie Jinkins and House Republican leader J.T. Wilcox, local leaders decried the next round of phase metrics set for April 12, which would then take effect Friday.
“On March 11, you announced a new set of metrics for the state under this plan. We ask the dates of your next evaluation be moved from April 12 to May 3. This change would allow us to offset the difficulties caused by circumstances beyond our control.”
The letter was signed by Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards, County Executive Bruce Dammeier, Bruce Kendall, president and CEO of the Economic Development Board for Tacoma-Pierce County and Tom Pierson, president and CEO of the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber.
“A rollback would have negative impacts for the mental and economic health of our community. In Pierce County we are all working together to continue the efforts to lower the rates — by continuing the message of ‘Mask Up and Save a Business,’ ” they wrote.
“It does not appear the increased cases are coming from the business community or restaurants who would be heavily impacted by the rollback. Rather, the cases are likely coming from private and home social gatherings which are unlikely to be impacted by a rollback.”
They contended that “Moving the evaluation date to May 3 will more accurately capture where Pierce County stands.”
On Sunday, in an emailed statement to The News Tribune, Dr. Anthony Chen, director of health for TPCHD noted that cases have been rising in the county since mid-March, before entering Phase 3.
“We continue to see cases and outbreaks in all settings and are concerned by the upward trend,” Chen said.
“Cases have been increasing since mid-March, even before Pierce County moved to Phase 3 on March 23. Today, we are working with 50 businesses and churches and almost 20 schools with positive cases. The high community spread is hurting our business owners, students, and residents.
“We are concerned that the increased exposure from Phase 3 and Spring Break will push rates higher in the coming weeks. The rapid spread of infections by variants is also worrisome. We appreciate that moving Pierce County from Phase 3 to 2 will hurt businesses but failing to stop this surge in infection has real costs as well.
He added that: “We are committed to working with Pierce County, the City of Tacoma, and all other partners to control the rising infections.”
VACCINE ALLOCATION
The matter of Pierce County’s missed allocations of vaccine doses, which became a hot topic during Wednesday’s Board of Health meeting, also was covered in the Pierce County leaders’ letter.
“… we are concerned about the shortfall in vaccine supply and concerns over the discrepancies in data. Further, an error in the state pro-rata allocation of vaccinations has shorted for Pierce County. This error in calculations has a direct ripple effect on our underserved communities and those disproportionately affected by COVID-19.
“While the error has been rectified, we are still short vaccines, so are asking for the full allocation before the next county evaluation.”
Pierson, when contacted Friday by The News Tribune, offered more details on the data discrepancies mentioned in the letter.
“When you compare the data between the county and state, they don’t line up on case counts, hospitalization and even deaths.”
The state’s data is what is used for the metrics.
The state Department of Health’s data dashboard and the Tacoma Pierce County Health Department’s dashboard have historically not aligned, with differing explanations related to how they are processed and timing. The state’s numbers generally run higher.
Woodards emphasized her concerns for local businesses moving back to Phase 2 in a phone interview with The News Tribune on Friday.
“I’m just deeply concerned about another step backwards when the community is feeling so hopeful,” she said. “I’m also deeply concerned about the effects on our businesses who waited for Phase 3 to open up, for our restaurants, and retailers who order food for being at 50 percent, brought back workers to deal with crowds at 50 percent. I’m just deeply concerned for our economy and our businesses, who will suffer greatly, In my opinion, moving back to Phase 2.”
Woodards said she wants to beef up messaging around the importance of getting vaccinated.
“We’re working right now to work with a lot of community groups, restaurants, retailers, businesses, nonprofits … around helping us continue to get the message out that we’re not out of the woods yet. And we still need to be diligent in our fight against COVID.”
Kendall also promoted the letter in a call-to-action email sent to business interests in the community to boost the message and asked for others to also write their own memos to the state leaders, with suggested bullet points to include.
“There is a strong case to be made that this move is premature and will do nothing to slow the virus’ spread,” he wrote.
On Friday, Inslee announced that the criteria for Roadmap to Recovery program would change again, saying that counties can now miss one of the two metrics and remain in Phase 3. If they miss both, then they backslide.
“Given the incredible progress on vaccinations and our focus protecting people from severe illness, we believe analyzing and requiring both metrics together is the right approach to make sure we’re considering the connection between COVID cases and our medical system and hospitalizations,” Inslee said in a statement Friday.
The move came one day after after countering questions in his weekly briefing saying the metrics were what they were, and “fudge factors” for those on the bubble would not be beneficial in the state making progress against COVID-19.
“I just want to reiterate that this is not sort of a discretionary call by the governor here,” he said Thursday. “The numbers will be the numbers, and we will look at them. We don’t anticipate, you know, changing the numbers by 10s or hundreds. Once you start doing that I don’t know where you stop so, at least at the moment we’re not thinking of fudge factors here.”
The metrics facing the county in the Roadmap program:
▪ Fewer than 200 new cases per 100,000 over two weeks
▪ Fewer than five new hospitalizations per 100,000 over one week.
By Wednesday, it was clear to local health officials that Pierce County was failing both metrics, who delivered the bad news at the Board of Health meeting that afternoon.
It also was highlighted at Wednesday’s meeting that amid the state’s “incredible progress” in vaccines that Pierce County had not received all the vaccines it was supposed to be allocated, later determined to be the result of a technical glitch and misunderstanding between county and state officials dealing with the vaccine rollout.
State officials, in a text sent to Dammeier that he read at the meeting, initially claimed that the county had not accepted all doses it had been offered, which health department representatives flatly rejected as not true.
Despite the midweek back-and-forth over the vaccines, health officials from both the state and local health departments on Thursday said they were working together to get the county caught up on vaccine distribution, which has lagged behind the state average and surrounding counties.
No local health officials’ signatures were on Friday’s letter. In an interview Thursday with The News Tribune, a representative with the health department said the disparity of COVID-19 vaccines was not the main reason Pierce County was facing a return to Phase 2.
“We’re not talking 10s of 1,000s of vaccines right now, which may have made a difference,” Stephanie Dunkel, TPCHD’s Assistant Division Director for Communicable Disease, told The News Tribune. “So mask mandates and isolation and quarantine and investigations work that we’re doing are still effective tools, and tools we need to continue going. With the balance of the vaccine and those tools, we’re still definitely in that phase where we need to be doing all of the above.”
Friday afternoon, appointments were still available for multiple vaccine events in the county.
And, on the same day as the county is set to face its phase evaluation, a mass vaccination event offering at least 500 Johnson & Johnson vaccines is planned for grocery and retail workers April 12 at Court House Square in Tacoma. The appointments, according to a joint news release, were coordinated directly by Fred Meyer, and organized alongside the city of Tacoma and the health department.
When asked about the vaccine glitch between the state and county, Woodards said she doesn’t know if the extra doses would have made a difference, but didn’t want to dwell much on what might have been.
“We fixed it — we’ve got too much to worry about,” she said. “We’ve got to move forward and get this under control.”
This story was originally published April 9, 2021 at 5:27 PM.
