PORT ANGELES – At Friday mornings Covid-19 briefing Health Officer Dr. Allison Berry Unthank reported 232 total cases for Clallam County and 226 patients recovered, 18 cases per 100,000 population in a 2-week period, 1 person is currently hospitalized and there are 35 tests pending.
There have only been a few cases related to Labor Day gatherings so far, but Dr. Unthank says next week will be the real test as to whether that holds up. She considers a bad spike in cases to be what we saw after 4th of July when our daily totals jumped to 5 and 10 cases per day for an extended period.
If things hold steady, the Dr. says we should start opening our schools to early-grade students on October 5.
“Opening schools will increase the number of connections that we have in our community. And so I was recently on a call with a lot of Representatives around the state and there’s a pretty-much uniform conclusion that we need to prioritize school’s first. That really needs to be the next thing that we focus on, reopening. And then once we can get the kids in school, if that’s going well, then we can consider adding on additional business reopening beyond that. The main thing we’ve learned is if we go too fast, we see big spikes, things go backward.”
Unthank also described the issue of smoke in the air as “past tense”, saying our air quality is now in the ‘Good’ range, and now would be a good time to open doors and windows and air out our homes as well as spending some time outdoors.
The Dr. was asked about what to expect from the flu season this year.
“What we’ve seen in other parts of the world is that the same physical distancing we’ve put in place for covid-19 does help for the flu. And so if we really practice that distancing, that mask wearing, we can blunt the flu season as well, and certainly if we all get vaccinated. So I am hopeful, if we follow all the guideline,s that we can do this really quite well.”.