One new death, 16 new coronavirus cases in Whatcom County in two days, state says

One Whatcom County resident who tested positive for COVID-19 has died and sixteen more residents have tested positive for the virus according to the Washington State Department of Health on Saturday, Aug. 1.

Whatcom County now has had 910 confirmed cases and 38 deaths during the pandemic, according to the state. The new numbers mean 4.2% of people diagnosed with the new coronavirus in Whatcom have died — according to state Department of Health data as of 11:59 p.m. Friday, July 31.

The state also reported Saturday that Whatcom County has had 79 hospitalizations and has conducted 32,557 tests, with 2.8% returning positive results.

The numbers were collected over two days as the state said it was unable to update the dashboard Friday. Data experts continued to work on the data processing issue that resulted in duplicate records in the COVID-19 database.

The most recent data from the state’s Risk Assessment Dashboard, reported on Thursday, shows Whatcom County missing four of five Phase 2 metrics goals:

▪ Whatcom is missing the target rate of fewer than 25 new cases per 100,000 residents every 14 days with a rate of 62.6.

▪ Whatcom is missing the target rate of more than 50 individuals tested for each new confirmed case the past week with a rate of 46.

▪ Whatcom is missing the target of 2% or less of individuals testing positive for COVID-19 during the past week with a rate of 2.2%.

▪ Whatcom is missing the target of less than 80% of all licensed hospital beds occupied by non-COVID-19 patients with 84.3% reported by the state.

▪ Whatcom is making the target of less than 10% of all licensed hospital beds being occupied by COVID-19 patients with 1.2% reported by the state.

St. Joseph hospital in Bellingham reported to The Bellingham Herald on Saturday that it was treating two patients for the new coronavirus.

U.S. and Washington state

More than 17.76 million cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed worldwide, with more than 682,855 deaths as of Saturday afternoon, according to Johns Hopkins University. The United States has over 4.61 million confirmed cases — the most reported cases of any nation — and at least 154,320 related deaths.

Overall, the Washington State Department of Health Saturday afternoon reported 57,541 cases (an increase of 1,738 from Thursday, the last day numbers were reported), 1,592 deaths (an increase of 28 from Thursday) and 5,655 coronavirus-related hospitalizations (an increase of 87 from Thursday). Approximately 2.8% of all confirmed cases in the state have resulted in death, while 5.7% of the 1,001,528 tests administered have come back positive for COVID-19.

Phased reopening

Gov. Jay Inslee Tuesday extended the pause indefinitely on counties moving ahead in the Safe Start Washington plan.

Five counties remain in a modified version of Phase 1, 17 counties — including Whatcom — are in Phase 2 and 17 counties are in Phase 3.

Phase 2 allows restaurants and taverns to operate at half capacity with table occupancy limited to five, hair and nail salons and barber shops to resume business, and retail stores to reopen for in-store purchases at 30% capacity. It also allows additional outdoor recreation and gatherings with no more than five people outside of a person’s household.

Phase 3 allows gyms and movie theaters to operate at half capacity and restaurants to increase capacity to 75%. A prohibition on bar seating at restaurants and taverns was added in this phase earlier in July.