King County sharing details of its first Omicron case. Pierce, Thurston counties are not
King County is sharing information about the status of its first Omicron variant case, but the other two counties with cases have chosen not to.
On Saturday, the state Department of Health announced Washington state’s first three cases of the COVID-19 Omicron variant. They included a man in his 30s from Thurston County, a man in his 20s from Pierce County and a woman in her 20s from King County.
King County since has offered additional information about its case. Public Health — Seattle & King County posted on its blog Wednesday, “The patient has experienced mild illness and has not required hospitalization. There is no evidence of widespread exposure from this case.”
It added, “The patient has not reported any recent travel, suggesting the Omicron variant has been spreading locally.”
On Wednesday, representatives of the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department and Thurston County’s public health department said they would not be releasing any more information about their cases, including vaccination status of the infected people.
“We don’t share information about individual COVID-19 cases or any individual health information for COVID-19 or any disease, and we aren’t planning to do so in this case,” said TPCHD media representative Kenny Via in response to questions via email.
“Our case and contact team is investigating,” he added.
A representative for Thurston County’s health department told The Seattle Times on Wednesday that the department also would not be offering additional information, citing patient privacy laws.
DOH COVID-19 media representative Charlie Boisner told The News Tribune via email in response to questions that the state department would defer to the counties for what information is made available.
“DOH has no additional information regarding the Omicron cases at this time. As Washington is a Home Rule state, the local health jurisdictions are the entities responsible for conducting the case investigation for their reported COVID-19 cases ... unless they request support from DOH centralized case investigation and contact tracing.
“They have not requested such support for these instances,” he noted.
He added, “DOH does intend on releasing more information as it becomes available to us, however, at this time we have nothing new to share.”
The Associated Press reported Wednesday that more than 40 people in the U.S. have been found to be infected with the variant so far, with more than three-quarters of the patients vaccinated. The chief of the CDC said Wednesday that nearly all of the cases presented only mild illness.
This story was originally published December 9, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
