PORT ANGELES – One new positive case of Covid-19 reported Thursday brings our county’s total to 50.

County Health Officer Dr. Allison Berry Unthank to gave some perspective on the county’s relatively low number versus what she’s seeing in places like Yakima County or, more broadly, states like Arizona, Texas and Florida.

“Absolutely, I think unfortunately there’s been a perspective in a lot of places that if they weren’t hit really hard in the first wave of the virus that it just can’t get there, and that’s not true. It’s really that we were lucky. We were lucky we weren’t the first county to get hit, and so that gave us some time to prepare. But it doesn’t make us immune to the virus, and so really all counties can get affected equally by this virus if we let our guard down. And the only thing that’s keeping our numbers low right now is some of the preparation we put in place, the infection control, and also the work of our citizens. And whenever we let down our guard it can really get out of control quite quickly.”

Unthank weighed in on what she’s seen after the first few days of required masks in public places.

“Yeah, I think it is becoming much more the norm to wear masks in public places, which is really good because that’s how we keep from spreading this infection unintentionally to each other, and how we manage to keep our businesses open, that you’ll really at this point…you know, I think one of the goals before was to get to more and more openings, but right now we just have to do these good infection control measures to keep what we have open, still open.”