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PORT ANGELES – In her COVID-19 briefing Wednesday morning, County Health Officer Dr. Unthank reported that there are no new cases of the virus locally. Of the 414 people that have been tested, 357 tests are negative, 49 tests are pending and 8 people have tested positive. All 8 are recovering at home and are said to be doing well.

Unthank also referred to the University of Washington research study, which we bought you last week, that estimates the virus will peak in our state in mid-April.

“I do agree with that research. We would anticipate that Clallam County’s peak is going to be a little bit delayed from that just because of the distance we are from the epicenter of where they started and also because we’ve been practicing social distancing before we actually started to see a peak locally, which delays when that peak shows up but makes it smaller. So we anticipate our peak will probably be a week or two after the state peak.”

That study, which is being updated regularly, projects that we’ll see 23 deaths per day in Washington starting in about two weeks, and over 1,200 deaths by the end of summer. Grim numbers, but Unthank manages to mine some good news out of the data.

“There was some good news in that report, which is that if we all keep doing what we’re doing, so if we keep maintaining social distancing and if we prevent any large-scale outbreaks locally, that we actually do have the hospital capacity and medical capacity in Washington state to meet the needs of our population when we hit that peak, but we only can do that if we keep doing what we’re doing. So as we keep doing our social distancing, if we keep preventing outbreaks, if we keep making sure that our First Responders and healthcare workers have access to the PPE that they need.”

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