PORT ANGELES — Two more Clallam County residents have tested positive for COVID-19.
That brings the total number of confirmed cases to four.
Clallam County’s health officer believes the virus is far more widespread throughout the community. At a daily emergency operations center briefing Monday, Dr. Allison Berry Unthank said the local ER’s are now seeing more people presenting with symptoms similar to the coronavirus
“Until this last weekend, we really weren’t seeing a lot of that. But starting over the course of the weekend, we have started to see an upswing with people presenting with symptoms that look like COVID-19. And so, at this point, we really do think we have much more widespread COVID than we had before. Unfortunately testing continues to be incredibly limited. So we’re going to have to continue to move forward without the kind of testing we want to do.”
Clallam County has done 174 tests, with 116 negative and 54 results are still pending.
Unthank says its best to stay home if you’re sick with anything and best to stay home even if you’re healthy right now
“And so what we really have to do is we all have to treat any illness like it could be so COVID. So I’m really asking everyone to get serious about staying home not just if you’re sick, but honestly staying home as much as you can. We’ve always recommended people stay home if they are sick, but if you are not sick, you don’t know if you could come in contact with someone who is and so really we want you to stay home practice social distancing.”
Unthank says there is still a big shortage of personal protective equipment for health care workers. She says they’ll be following new guidance from the CDC on how to extend the life of such equipment. She’s thankful for local efforts to make and donate items such as masks and urges people to contact the EOC for specific details on how to make masks and donations of materials.