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PORT ANGELES – Three more patients in Clallam County have tested positive for COVID-19. The county now has had its first case of community transmission.

Today, Clallam County health officer Dr. Allison Berry Unthank says a married couple in their 70’s tested positive and that’s the first case where they apparently got the virus locally and not from outside the area.

The third new case was announced Monday morning in someone that actually works in Jefferson County where they were tested but is a Clallam County resident.

There are now eight confirmed COVID-19 cases in Clallam County.

Unthank says, despite the new cases, she thinks efforts at social distancing and more testing are working and the next two weeks are critical.

“These couple weeks are really critical we can do a lot right now to keep our community safe that I recommend we do.  If we all do what we’ve asked of you,  think we actually have a shot to get through this without getting a severe upswing.”

Unthank says she believes we haven’t seen a big upswing in cases here is because of a lot of messaging in the community and a lot of testing in local health care facilities.

“I think the reason why we haven’t seen that rapid upswing is we’ve been messaging as intensely as we have about personal protective equipment and about about doing some distancing. A lot of the early surge in cases at other small localities or rural areas were actually in healthcare facilities. Where people, for instance, went to a nursing facility and were ill.  Because we were messaging earlier on that, we really haven’t seen that locally and we have been testing our nursing facilities.”

Unthank says there are also facilitating more testing for those in homeless shelters along with first responders. She also says there’s still a shortage of personal protection equipment, but she is hopeful more tests will become available for the rural areas like Clallam County.

So far, Clallam County has tested 361 people with 322 negatives and 31 tests are still pending.

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