Washington Reports 551 New Coronavirus Cases, 8 More Deaths

SEATTLE, WA — Health officials reported 551 new coronavirus cases and eight additional deaths in Washington on Wednesday. Per the latest data, at least 64,702 patients have tested positive in Washington since the crisis began, and 1,724 patients have died from complications linked to COVID-19.

At least 4,772 new illnesses have been confirmed in Washington over the last seven days, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's case tracker. The latest figures continue to show improvement in the daily number of illnesses reported. However, most of the state's counties still show a rate of cases by population much higher than the target threshold of 25 cases per 100,000 residents over 14 days.

Early signs show progress against COVID-19 resurgence in Washington

In a weekly telebriefing with reporters Wednesday, the state Department of Health acknowledged promising indicators of progress in the fight against COVID-19 in Washington.

"Over the past few weeks, we are now clearly starting to see a decline in the number of cases that are being detected in Washington," said Dr. Kathy Lofy, the state health officer. "You generally have to see a few weeks' trend in data to make sure that you are confident in what you are seeing. We're starting to feel more confident that this trend that we're seeing is real."

Lofy said the latest data pointed to a mid-July peak, seen both in new cases counts and among emergency visits for illnesses with COVID-19-like symptoms. Despite the good news, health officials warned against complacency, as virus activity remains well above the target level in many counties.

"While we are starting to see some positive signs, activity is still high," Lofy said. "It's incredibly important that we continue to take all the public health measures we've been talking about, to continue to bring COVID activity down in our state."

State Secretary of Health John Wiesman said the pause on reopening phases is likely to continue for a while since even a moderate relaxing of restrictions in the past led to a sharp increase in activity.

"I'm a bit more hesitant now because I've seen what happened in a number of communities," Wiesman said. "Once we were allowed to go to Phase 2, people acted like we were in Phase 4."

Officials 'hopeful' that some in-person learning can resume this year

Dr. Lofy said the overall picture of COVID-19 activity declining could mean some opportunity for more traditional, in-person learning returning to some school districts before the year is over — but only if the state continues on its trajectory to tamp down the virus.

"While some counties' COVID activity is going down, we still have some counties whose COVID activity is going up," Lofy said. "I am feeling hopeful in some of those counties that are seeing declining trends that, hopefully, sometime this fall we can do some in-person learning in some of those counties. As we've known all along during this pandemic, activity right now is still so dependent on our behaviors."

Lofy continued to say that her optimism for the future does not mean schools will be ready to safely reopen any time soon.

"Even though we're seeing some good news with some of our graphs plateauing, and even starting to decrease, our activity is still very high," Lofy said. "There are many counties that are still not really within the incident rate that a lot of other countries were in when they reopened school."

View detailed information on virus activity and trends in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties.

Washington is changing how it reports negative test results

Health officials also announced they are implementing a change to reflect the total number of negative tests, rather than only reporting the number of people who have been screened for the virus.

Under the current system, someone tested multiple times would only appear in the data once, which led to the numbers failing to "fully reflect the actual testing volume or current test positive rate, since only the first negative result for each person included."

Secretary Wiesman said the more complete figures will provide the public with a clearer view of modern testing efforts and results.

"This new approach will give us the most complete and current picture of the actual amount of COVID-19 testing happening in our state," Wiesman said. "This also becomes important when comparing Washington state to other states."

Until the upgrade is complete, updated information on the number of negative tests will remain unavailable on the state's dashboard.

Total coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths by county:

The above numbers are provided by the state Department of Health, and some numbers differ from the totals provided separately by county health agencies.

This article originally appeared on the Seattle Patch