By Pepper Fisher
PORT ANGELES – At Friday morning’s weekly Covid briefing, Health Officer Dr. Allison Berry reported a steadily rising total of 1,163 cases in our county, with 80-90 new cases in the last 2 weeks.
Dr. Berry says the current surge is driven mostly by younger, healthier people than we’ve seen in the past, both locally and statewide, and has been largely traced to travelling and social gatherings over Easter.
Our rate per 100,000 here is at 114 today, and that number is significant again because of a recent meeting of the Olympic Region Health Officers, of which Dr. Berry is a member.
“I have been in conference with the Olympic Region Health Officers, and we have decided that if cases rise above the 150 cases per 100,000 threshold, that we will begin to institute additional community mitigation measures. Not a full roll-back to Phase 2, we don’t think that’s needed, but we do think that we will need to start scaling back large group gatherings if we pass that threshold. So right now there are gatherings allowed up to 400 people. If we pass that threshold, if any of us do, that individual county would move independently, a scale-back to Phase 2 guidance for large group gatherings.”
Dr. Berry says when you combine the number of people who have been vaccinated with the number of people who have tested positive for the virus in Clallam County, we only need about 6,500 more vaccinated people to reach herd immunity.
With that in mind, there are about 100 slots available for this weekend’s Moderna events in Port Angeles. Moderna is for people 18 years and older. You can also sign up now for next weekend’s Pfizer events for people 16 and older.
Health officials are also planning a new strategy to get more people vaccinated locally.
“We are also going to be scaling up our pop-up clinics. So, trying to bring vaccines to people. So bringing that, we’re working with the Port Angeles Chamber to bring some vaccine events downtown, around the time that restaurants are open, to try to help folks access vaccine who are working or visiting our downtown establishments. And we’re happy to do more pop-ups around the community as people are interested and we’re going to be problem solving where the where the best places are to bring vaccines in the coming weeks.”