Our actions matter: stay home, keep distance and wear a face covering
— from Washington Department of Health —
OLYMPIA – The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) released the latest statewide situation report, which outlines concerning trends in COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths, as well as mixed trends in case counts in different parts of the state.
Report findings include:
- COVID-19 transmission continued to grow across the state as of early July. Best estimates place the reproductive number (the estimated number of new people each COVID-19 patient will infect) above one in eastern and western Washington. The goal is a reproductive number well below one, which would mean the number of people getting COVID-19 is declining. While the estimated reproductive numbers are lower than they were in last week’s report, COVID-19 cases are continuing to grow.
- Case numbers continue to trend upward in many counties, with possible decreases or plateaus in Clark, Franklin, King, Spokane and Yakima counties. It’s difficult to tell at this stage whether these numbers reflect true decreases, or if delays in testing are impacting case counts.
- The proportion of tests that come back positive is still high in eastern Washington and is rising in western Washington. This likely means high or increasing case counts reflect greater spread of the virus, not just increases in testing. For this reason, the report recommends caution when interpreting recent downward or flattening trends in some counties.
- The recent concentration of new cases in young adults has continued to spread into younger and older age groups. As noted in last week’s report, this trend in age distribution reflects a similar trend in Florida, where a high concentration of cases in young adults spread broadly into other age groups. New hospitalizations are also increasing across most age groups in the state.
- Deaths continue to rise in eastern Washington, and appear to be increasing in western Washington for the first time since March.
“While I’m encouraged by continued progress in Yakima County, the data require that we must do more across the state,” said Secretary of Health John Wiesman. “We are still at great risk for significant growth as the virus continues to spread in Washington state. And, as it moves into more vulnerable age groups, I am very concerned that hospitalizations and deaths will continue to increase. Our actions matter: stay home, keep distance and wear a face covering. We all need to take this responsibility seriously and limit our activity to protect the health and safety of our communities.”
DOH partners with the Institute for Disease Modeling, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, University of Washington and the Microsoft AI for Health program to develop this weekly report. More COVID-19 data can be found on the DOH website and in the state’s risk assessment dashboard.
The DOH website is your source for a healthy dose of information. Find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Sign up for the DOH blog, Public Health Connection.
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This story and headline are incredibly misleading. Headline does not reflect today’s situation at all. Data used is almost a month old. New cases continue to closely correlate with testing and have plateaued/falling; hospitalizations were slightly increasing (by about 15 new hospitalizations when compared to mid May) but look to have now plateaued; deaths steady at 4-6 per day in all of Washington State since early May; reproductive number continues to fall since mid June for western Washington (1.2 as of 7/8) and has been steady in eastern Washington at ~1.2 since end of March. This all assuming the data as listed is to be 100% trusted.
https://coronavirus.wa.gov/what-you-need-know/covid-19-risk-assessment-dashboard
https://www.doh.wa.gov/Emergencies/NovelCoronavirusOutbreak2020COVID19/DataDashboard
Ms. Donague the “SitRep 10: COVID-19 transmission across Washington State” is very careful to state what period of data they are looking (mid to early July). Their reason for not including more recent data is that it is often incomplete, as is the results for testing which is lagging considerably (and we are all aware of the multi-week delay between contracting C19, and dying from it).
The DoH “Dashboard” is current through midnight on the 27th. What one might naively conclude looking at most of the curves is that in the last week (or two in the case of mortality) cases are tapering off. That is very likely due to delays in testing, reporting, and compiling the data — as the plots suggest. The R value is still estimated to be above 1.0 and has never dropped below that value. Until it does, “things” only have the potential to get worse.
WA state has done pretty well up until recently, but “plateauing” is not really the end-goal.
Please take a more careful look at Situation Report 10. New cases most certainly do NOT correlate with testing. That is FALSE. And yes, the effective reproduction number R is down to about 1.2 from the previous report, which was truly alarming. But anything above 1.0 leads to exponential growth of C-19 cases, which is still happening.
We cannot relax our guard.
Thanks to Kenn, Michael, and many others who frequently post commentary that is based on reality and the need to continue to be vigilant.
Mr. Riordan, what data are you looking at in your statement that increased testing is not correlating with increased cases? All the data I am seeing dispute that, including in the report and on the doh.wa.gov site. If the two are not correlating as you say, why does the new cases curve look identical to the testing curve including the rapid rise starting mid June and now what looks to be a plateau? You can’t be saying the two are completely unrelated?