By Pepper Fisher
PORT ANGELES – Just in time for our county’s vaccination mandate to lift Friday and the statewide mask mandate to be lifted Friday night at 11:59, the Clallam County Health Department reports that our Covid case rate per 100K has dipped below 200 for the first time since last fall.
Health Officer Dr. Allison Berry calls that encouraging news.
“We are very encouraged to see case numbers moving in the right direction. This does put us in a good position to lift the mandates tomorrow. We do still recommend masking in indoor spaces until we get our case numbers a little lower, less than 100 cases per hundred thousand, but it won’t be mandatory.”
That’s not to say that a business doesn’t have the right to require masks after Friday, and Dr. Berry urges everyone to respect that decision.
“That’s a risky decision for a business to make. So if a business is requiring masks, even after the mandate has been lifted, almost guaranteed there’s someone who works there who’s high risk, that they’re trying to protect. So, please honor that business, put your mask back on just to make sure that you can take care of those workers.”
While most metrics are moving in the right direction, we have seen 5 additional deaths in the last 10 days or so. Berry says deaths tend to lag several weeks behind falling case numbers and most of the latest deaths were unvaccinated people. She continues to emphasize the importance of getting vaccinated and booster shots for those who already have been.
So, as we forward from mandates to recommendations, how confident is the Dr. that we have seen the worst of Covid at this point?
“Yeah, right now, we are anticipating that we are likely to see good case numbers through the summer and then likely see a spike again in the fall, but nothing like what we’ve seen before. Because so many of us have some degree of immunity, either we’re vaccinated and boosted, or we got Covid or, unfortunately, both, and that immunity really will help protect our hospital system as we move forward.”
Something new at the County’s Covid page at clallam.net; The debut of the new Risk Dial. It looks just like the previous case rate dial, but now it describes the level of risk for being unmasked given the current case rate.