Whatcom ready to close this COVID isolation and quarantine facility
Two years after Whatcom County opened a COVID-19 isolation and quarantine facility amid the coronavirus pandemic, Health Department officials are planning to close that site, which will become a Motel 6 once again.
Only two people are staying at the Byron Avenue facility, and its last operational date will be March 31, Health Director Erika Lautenbach told the County Council in an online committee meeting Tuesday, March 22.
“We are working on options for motel stays, but we don’t plan to stand up anything that looks like what we have currently,” Lautenbach told the council’s Finance and Administrative Services Committee.
An isolation-only facility is available in the locker rooms at Civic Stadium in the event of another large outbreak, Lautenbach said.
“We anticipate that there will continue to be a need, but not at the level where we need the facility that we have currently,” she said.
County Council members were being asked Tuesday to approve an extra $15,000 for cleaning the isolation and quarantine site with funds provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Whatcom County opened its isolation and quarantine site at a former Motel 6 in the lower Sehome neighborhood of Bellingham in late April 2020 as part of statewide guidelines for Washington counties to open more businesses and ease social-distancing requirements established as the coronavirus pandemic worsened.
An original contract sought FEMA reimbursement for $1.34 million in startup costs.
Total lease cost was $1.16 million from April 6, 2020, to March 31, 2022, using a mix of CARES Act pandemic relief grants and FEMA awards.
Money was obtained from several federal sources for pay for food, supplies, case management, and county staff — mostly using American Rescue Plan Act funds and federal grants administered by the state Department of Health, said Health Department spokeswoman Scarlet Tang.
“There were no local or state funds, and we did not utilize the county general fund to fund the (isolation and quarantine facility). Everything was federally funded,” Tang told The Bellingham Herald in an email.
Those operational costs haven’t been tallied, Tang said.
More than 700 people used the Byron Avenue facility over the course of the pandemic, with an average daily occupancy of 10 people from November 2020 through October 2021, a Health Department spokeswoman said.
The site has capacity for 58 guests daily, according to previous Bellingham Herald reporting.
In January, it was reported at capacity as the highly contagious omicron variant swept the nation.
But starting April 1, it will be a Motel 6 — and the company is taking reservations online.
It will have a new owner and a new staff and will be a Motel 6 franchise, rather than a corporate location, general manager Scott Grobe told The Herald in an email.
This story was originally published March 23, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
