Health & Fitness
324 New Coronavirus Cases In Washington, 4 More Deaths
State health officials confirmed 324 new coronavirus cases and four more deaths Monday. Catch up on other recent developments.
SEATTLE, WA — Monday, state health officials confirmed four new deaths linked to COVID-19 in Washington and 324 new confirmed cases of the disease.
Deaths Thursday were reported in King, Franklin, and Yakima counties. Franklin and Yakima counties also bore most of the new cases, with 102 and 66 cases respectively. The fourth death has yet to be assigned to a county.
The new numbers mean a total of 26,158 cases of the coronavirus have been confirmed in the state since the outbreak began, and 1,221 people have died.
A total of 471,265 Washingtonians have been tested for the coronavirus, meaning roughly 5.6 percent of tests come back positive. That statistic has continually improved over the last week: the percentage of positive tests hovered between 6 and 7 percent for months, and has just recently begun to consistently move below 6 percent. State officials say the percentage of people testing positive for the virus is a key metric to determine if the state as a whole is recovering.
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Catch up on the latest developments:
As transmissions grow, health officials encourage following safety guidelines
Over the weekend a new report from the Institute of Disease Modeling found that coronavirus transmission was increasing in both western and eastern Washington. Now, health officials are trying to curb those transmissions by reminding everyone to wear masks, but especially residents of counties struggling to contain the virus.
Yakima County has been one of the hardest hit regions in the whole West Coast, and their number of new cases continue to outpace Washington's much more populous counties. To limit transmissions there, county health officials say they're trying to change the culture around masks.
Over the past few weeks the Yakima Health District says they've distributed more than 300,000 masks and face coverings to the public, and say the use of masks has gone from a rare occurrence to an overwhelmingly common one. The county says thousands more masks are on the way, which they hope will continue to flatten the growth of the virus there.
Meanwhile, the state is also trying to deal with businesses that don't follow mask requirements or other coronavirus safety regulations. At a conference Monday, L&I Assistant Director Anne Soiza said her office had received over 4,000 complaints about businesses ignoring safety regulations.
"L&I is basically triaging all of those complaints," said Soiza.
Several hundred of those businesses have been contacted so far. If businesses still refuses or fails to comply, they could be visited by L&I inspectors, and even ultimately end up facing a fine.
King County applies for Phase 2
Monday at a Board of Health meeting the King County Council unanimously voted 10 - 0 to approve Resolution 20-09 supporting King County's application to enter Phase 2 of Gov. Inslee's Safe Start plan. The vote means that the application for King County is nearly finished on the county's end: all that's left is for King County Executive Dow Constantine to sign the application and deliver it to state Secretary of Health John Wiesman. At the time of the vote Monday afternoon, county leaders said they expected Constantine to sign and deliver the application by the end of the day.
Judging from how quickly other large counties have had their applications processed, that means King County could be approved to enter Phase 2 by the end of the work week. Earlier, Pierce County submitted their application on a Tuesday, and had it granted by Wiesman the following Friday.
Applications to move forward in the Safe Start plan require the full support of lawmakers and the county's health care system. They also must meet a variety of key coronavirus growth metrics. According to the Washington Department of Health's COVID-19 risk assessment dashboard King County is meeting all five essential metrics of modified Phase 1.
| County | Confirmed Cases | Hospitalizations | Deaths |
| Adams | 93 (+2) | 7 | 0 |
| Asotin | 20 | 1 | 2 |
| Benton | 1,171 (+39) | 175 (+2) | 73 |
| Chelan | 273 | 19 (+1) | 6 |
| Clallam | 29 | 3 | 0 |
| Clark | 620 (+3) | 96 | 27 |
| Columbia | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Cowlitz | 109 (+2) | 16 | 0 |
| Douglas | 183 | 12 | 3 |
| Ferry | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Franklin | 946 (+102) | 104 (+3) | 26 (+1) |
| Garfield | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Grant | 264 (+5) | 30 (+1) | 5 |
| Grays Harbor | 20 | 7 | 0 |
| Island | 182 | 32 | 11 |
| Jefferson | 32 (+1) | 6 | 0 |
| King | 8,722 (+63) | 1,698 | 592 (+1) |
| Kitsap | 178 (+2) | 27 | 2 |
| Kittitas | 92 | 1 | 0 |
| Klickitat | 46 (+1) | 6 | 3 |
| Lewis | 39 (+1) | 11 (+1) | 3 |
| Lincoln | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Mason | 40 | 5 | 1 |
| Okanogan | 58 (+1) | 5 | 1 |
| Pacific | 12 | 2 | 1 |
| Pend Orielle | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| Pierce | 2,143 (+9) | 382 (+1) | 89 |
| San Juan | 15 | 1 | 0 |
| Skagit | 463 (+2) | 54 (+1) | 15 |
| Skamania | 3 | 1 | 0 |
| Snohomish | 3,152 (+16) | 586 (+2) | 156 |
| Spokane | 833 (+13) | 96 (+14 | 37 |
| Stevens | 15 | 4 | 1 |
| Thurston | 190 | 32 (+1) | 4 |
| Wahkiakum | 4 | 0 | 0 |
| Walla Walla | 120 (+2) | 8 | 3 |
| Whatcom | 453 (+5) | 53 | 38 |
| Whitman | 27 | 0 | 0 |
| Yakima | 5,450 (+66) | 397 (+2) | 121 (+1) |
| Unassigned | 91 (+43) | 4 (+1) | 1 (+1) |
| Total | 26,158 | 3,894 | 1,221 |
The above numbers are provided by the state Department of Health, and some numbers differ from the totals provided separately by county health agencies.
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