Whatcom reports 21st coronavirus-related death and three more positive tests Thursday
A 21st Whatcom County resident who tested positive for COVID-19, the new coronavirus, has died, according to information released Thursday, April 9, by the Whatcom County Health Department.
No other information on the most recent death, or one reported Wednesday, was available.
The health department also reported two more positive tests for COVID-19, meaning 243 Whatcom County residents have now tested positive for the respiratory illness. That’s five new cases of coronavirus have been reported the past two days.
Whatcom’s first death from coronavirus — a man in his 60s — was reported on March 19.
Whatcom Unified Command, the multi-governmental agency that’s directing local pandemic response, so far has released the age and gender of 18 of the county’s 21 deaths. All 18 of those deaths have been residents 60 or older, with 15 of them 80 or older. Eleven have been men.
Shuksan Healthcare Center and Lynden Manor each announced they had residents in their 90s who tested positive for COVID-19 die on Tuesday. Because the health department has not released information on the two most recent deaths, it is unclear if the two deaths reported by Shuksan and Lynden Manor are included in the county’s total.
The number of Whatcom County residents to recover from the respiratory illness after testing positive is not known, because the health department is not a healthcare provider and does not collect that information, unified command spokesperson Claudia Murphy told The Bellingham Herald in an email.
Whatcom Community College President Kathi Hiyane-Brown announced Wednesday, April 8, that a fourth person associated with the college has tested positive for coronavirus. The person is a part-time, hourly employee, and their health status was unknown, Hiyane-Brown said during a trustees meeting. The three other people with confirmed cases, which were announced March 27, March 31 and April 2, are recovering and did not need to be hospitalized, Hiyane-Brown said.
More than 1.5 million cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed worldwide, with more than 91,700 deaths as of Thursday morning, according to Johns Hopkins University. The United States has more than 451,000 confirmed cases — the most reported cases of any nation — with at least 15,938 deaths.
Overall, the Washington State Department of Health reported 9.608 cases and 446 deaths as of Thursday afternoon.
This story was originally published April 9, 2020 at 12:01 PM.
