SOUTH BEND — Covid-19 transmission in Pacific County stayed steady over the past week, as public health nurses are currently monitoring 11 active cases as of Nov. 2.

Of the 11 active cases being monitored by the Pacific County Health and Human Services Department, two are confirmed and the remaining nine are considered probable and awaiting further confirmation. There have now been 122 total cases of covid-19 attributed to the county since the pandemic began.

The two confirmed cases were announced by the department on Nov. 3. The individuals who tested positive are a man and a woman that are of the same household, both between the ages of 40 and 50. As of now, officials do not know how they were exposed to the virus.

Last month saw 33 newly confirmed cases of the coronavirus attributed to Pacific County residents, an average of 1.1 new cases per day and the most cases the county has seen in a single month since the pandemic began last spring.

Last week, the Washington State Department of Health warned that coronavirus activity was intensifying across the state. Hospitalizations and case counts rose in both western and eastern Washington from mid-September to mid-October, and increases in the western side of the state are widely distributed geographically and across age groups, suggesting that increases are due to broad community spread.

Pacific County’s neighbor to the south, Clatsop County, has also seen a surge in cases, reporting 14 newly confirmed cases alone on Nov. 2. The recent spike in cases are linked to parties and social gatherings, according to the county’s Public Health Department. The county has recorded 268 positive cases since the beginning of the pandemic. Wahkiakum County’s case count climbed to 11 last week.

As of Nov. 2, Washington state had 109,354 confirmed covid-19 infections, including 2,378 deaths.

County plans for third round of CARES funding

At the weekly Pacific County Emergency Management Agency meeting on Oct. 28, Paul Plakinger, fiscal analyst for the county, announced that the county plans to hold a third round of funding for “Pacific County CARES” grants for small businesses and nonprofit organizations, to disburse the remaining funds that the county received from the CARES Act.

The remaining funds will be awarded by the Pacific County Board of Commissioners at a Nov. 10 public meeting scheduled for 10 a.m. Plakinger said that all of the businesses and organizations awarded grants at the Nov. 10 meeting will be selected from existing applications that the county already has on file, and that new applications are not being accepted at this time.

“This should help us spend a lot of the remaining CARES Act money we have left,” Plakinger said.

According to Plakinger, there are at least 84 valid applications left that have not received funding as part of the county’s grant assistance program. The county has awarded nearly $400,000 to about 50 local businesses and organizations so far.