King County Quadrupled Daily Coronavirus Cases Since Early-June

SEATTLE, WA — King County has seen the number of new daily coronavirus infections quadruple over the past month, now health officials are issuing a dire warning: take this virus seriously or risk further sicknesses, deaths, and lockdowns.

The county is reporting an average of 171 new coronavirus cases a day each day over the past week— up from around 40 cases a day in early June. That's near the peak of around 200 cases a day in April, and a spike that has health officials worried that the virus is spiraling out of control as residents become more and more lax about following important safety guidelines.

"We all need to reboot our attitude about this disease and our resolve to live with it safely," said Dr. Jeff Duchin, Health Officer for Public Health — Seattle & King County.

Another worrying sign: the number of new infections in older adults. Over the past few weeks health officials have repeatedly warned that the high infection rate in younger adults would likely begin to spread to other age groups as those younger, more active and mobile adults move through their community. Now that process appears to have begun, an increase in cases across all age ranges has lifted the median age of new patients from 26 years old in mid-June to 36 currently.

Hospitalizations have also risen, though not as dramatically. In recent weeks King County has had around 80 or so patients hospitalized for COVID-19, up from an average of around 60 patients in mid-June. That represents around 2 percent of all hospital beds, right at the state's key metric benchmark of 2 percent or fewer.

To lower the number of new infections and get case counts back to where they were in early June, health officials are stressing that residents need to take the virus seriously once again. That means wearing a mask in public, practicing social distancing, limiting gatherings with people outside your household, and practicing better hygiene with frequent hand washing.

Health officials also want to stress that patients can spread the virus for days before even knowing they have it themselves, another reason that residents need to stay home as much as possible and stop gathering with friends or in public spaces, even if they feel healthy.

If the county can't do that, there may be consequences.

"Additional measures may have to be put in place to limit the ability of people to have so many close contacts so freely," said Duchin.

Those limits would be in addition to recent restrictions added at the state level by Gov. Jay Inslee. Thursday, Inslee announced new restrictions on bars and restaurants in an attempt to limit gatherings where the coronavirus is transmitted. Health officials say they know it's hard to adapt to live this way, but that the virus won't go away, and the situation won't improve unless everyone bands together.

"I'm talking about fundamentally rethinking our daily lives and how we go about our work and social activities," said Duchin. "It's not going to happen in the near future, and we need to come to terms with that."