Covid-19 update

Friday update: On Thursday, Wahkiakum County Health and Human Services reported four more case for county residents, bringing the total to 280. Fifteen are considered active.

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Six more cases of covid-19 were reported this week, with five on Monday and one on Tuesday, bringing the cumulative total in Wahkiakum County to 276, with 11 cases considered potentially active.

The six cases are not really related to each other, Wahkiakum Health and Human Resources Director Chris Bischoff said, but he added that two cases each are in two different households.

“There is no way for us to know in anything near real time whether these are omicron or not,” Bischoff said, “but it’s pretty safe to say the they are just from talking to the state epidemiologist.”

The omicron variant continues to surge across the United States, he added, and hospitalizations are at all time highs in many areas.

The number of patients being treated for covid-19 at St. John Hospital was 27 on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, at home covid tests have been selling quickly at the Cathlamet Pharmacy.

Bischoff provided a breakdown of the positive covid-19 cases in the county by zip code. The largest number of cases, 230 of the current total of 276, have presented in residents living in the Cathlamet zip code. Skamokawa residents account for 17 of the cases, Rosburg has seen 12 cases, and there have been six cases in Grays River. On the far western end of the county, which shares the Naselle zip code, there have been 11 cases.

Females account for 141 cases, while 135 cases have presented in males. Most of the cases, 89, have shown up in people between the ages of 40-59. There have been 75 cases in people between the ages of 20-39, 56 cases in youths aged 0-17, 42 cases in people between the ages of 60-79, and 14 cases in people aged 80 and over.

As for the vaccine, 4,632 doses have been given to residents in Wahkiakum County, and 47.6 percent of the total population is considered fully vaccinated.

The change in vaccination percentages in age groups was marginal over the past week, with the largest increase seen in children age 12-17, which went from 27.3 percent to 29 percent fully vaccinated. The percentage of people between the ages of 18-34 to be fully vaccinated rose one whole percent from 43.5 to 44.5 percent. There was no change in the 35-49 demographic, and the percentage of people to be fully vaccinated over the age of 50 actually went down incrementally.