PORT ANGELES – Clallam County’s  Health Department Tuesday reported two additional deaths due to Covid. Both are a little different than what the county has seen in the past.

Health Officer Dr. Allison Berry:

“It’s particularly tragic when it’s a young man in his forties, who was otherwise healthy. So we want to send our condolences to his family. It’s a, it’s a really tragic loss to our community.”

Berry says the news reflects the trend we’ve seen of younger people contracting the virus. She says, of the three patients currently in the hospital with the virus, one is in ICU in critical condition and coincidentally is also a man in his 40s.

The other newly reported death actually occurred some time ago, but was only recently discovered through a records review.

“So, how the deaths get reported; when we’re following cases closely, like we are able to now, we know when one of our current cases dies. But when we had that really massive surge in the winter, a lot of our cases were being investigated by the State, and so we weren’t following them as closely as we usually do. And so what happens then is, we look at death records and we get reports from death certificates. And we just, to keep our records up to date, always take a look at those. And if certain symptoms show up, it causes a further investigation. And we we did find one that was missed about a month ago.”

Also reported Tuesday, was a lower rate of cases per 100-thousand at 103, down from 112 on Monday, but Dr. Berry says it’s too soon to call it a trend because there are so many people in quarantine. She says we’ll need about another week to find out how many more cases result from a few large gatherings last month.