1,200+ new COVID cases in Tri-Cities area in 1 day. Hospitals getting slammed
The number of people hospitalized for COVID-19 treatment in Benton and Franklin County hospitals jumped to 91 on Thursday, according to the Benton Franklin Health District.
That was 11 more people hospitalized than the day before.
For the same day the Tri-Cities based health district reported 1,284 new confirmed cases of COVID-19.
New daily cases have about doubled from the highest they had been previously in the pandemic, said Dr. Amy Person, health officer for the two counties, in an interview this week with the Benton Franklin Community Health Alliance.
And that’s likely a gross underestimate of the number of new cases, she said.
Home test kits, with many results not reported to public health officials, are more popular and community test sites did less testing last week because they were closed or had shortened hours Sunday to help laboratories catch up with a backlog.
About 97% of positive tests from the Pasco free drive-thru testing site and the Richland free walk-up testing site now are the omicron variant of the virus, Rick Dawson, senior manager at the health district, told the district’s board on Wednesday.
A random sample of tests rather than all tests are analyzed for variants.
Although the highly infectious omicron variant usually causes less severe cases than the delta variant that previously dominated Tri-Cities cases, the sheer number of cases has public health officials concerned about hospital capacity and more deaths.
The 91 COVID cases being treated in Tri-Cities area hospitals on Thursday was up from 77 on Tuesday and 80 on Wednesday.
As recently as mid December hospitals were reporting 15 patients, down from a high of 127 patients in mid September, according to Tri-City Herald records.
The cases on Thursday accounted for 22% of all patients in the Richland, Kennewick, Pasco and Prosser hospitals.
In Washington state on Wednesday, there were 2,333 confirmed COVID hospitalizations, with 145 on ventilators, compared with 135 the previous day, said Cassie Sauer chief executive of the Washington State Hospital Association.
Washington hospitals are seeing 30-35 COVID deaths on average a day, compared with 10 to 15 just a few weeks ago, she said.
“These are almost all unvaccinated and unboosted,” she noted. “There’s a lot about this pandemic that we could repair, but these deaths cannot be undone.”
The new case rate for Benton and Franklin counties combined on Thursday was 2,425 new cases per 100,000 people over two weeks. At the start of January the rate was just below 200.
The percentage of tests with positive results at the Pasco drive-thru testing site at Columbia Basin College has increased to 44%, in part because people without symptoms or a suspected exposure to COVID-19 have been discouraged from using the site.
At the free walk-up testing site at 975 George Washington Way in Richland, about 40% of tests have been positive recently.
Both sites have been operating at capacity, Dawson said.
For more information on where to get tested, go to covid19.bfhd.wa.gov/testing-sites.
Debbie Cockrell of The (Tacoma) News Tribune contributed to the report.
