PACIFIC COUNTY — After more than a year of hitting grim milestones in the battle against covid-19, Pacific County is on the cusp of surpassing a marker that it can be proud of: achieving a vaccination rate of 50% for the county’s total population.

According to the latest data from the Washington State Department of Health, 49.2% of all Pacific County residents have received at least one coronavirus vaccine dose, and 45.1% of the county’s population is fully vaccinated against a virus that has killed more than 600,000 Americans and more than 4 million people throughout the world.

Among the county’s eligible population, which includes those age 12 and older, more than 55% have received at least one vaccine dose. The number is higher among the county’s senior population, with 75.1% of people age 65 and older in the county having received at least one dose, and lower among younger adults, with 35.5% of people age 18-34 having received at least one dose.

Cases continue to remain relatively low and stable in the county, according to recent data from the Pacific County Public Health and Human Services Department. As of July 7, 11 new cases had been reported in the county over the previous 14 days, for a total of 1,081 confirmed cases since the pandemic began. The case rate per 100,000 people over the previous 14 days was 50.8, up slightly from 41.6 over the prior two-week period.

Dates and locations for upcoming vaccine clinics in the county can be found at www.pacificcountycovid19.com.

Variants pose riskThe vaccination rate has fallen off in Pacific County and throughout the country in recent weeks. Meanwhile, the fast-spreading and contagious Delta variant that has plagued countries including India — where it was first identified — and the United Kingdom is gaining a foothold in the United States. This is especially true in states and communities with low vaccination rates, particularly some in the South and some mountain states.

Pull Quote

‘I do worry about especially unvaccinated people having significant numbers of hospitalizations and potentially deaths in that population as we go forward.’

Dr. Steven Krager

Pacific County public health officer

Discussing the coronavirus Delta variant

According to Dr. Steven Krager, Pacific County public health officer, variants or strains are simply viruses that make copies of themselves. RNA viruses, like covid-19, are more prone than other types of viruses to make errors when doing so. These errors can lead to viral mutations.

“Sometimes [the mutations] are good for the virus, sometimes they’re bad for the virus — it’s kind of random. But if a mutation changes something in the virus that changes the behavior of the virus, it can become concerning. And if that happens enough, that new strain — because it is advantageous to the virus in some way — will crowd out the other ones and start spreading more rapidly,” Krager said at a recent virtual community health forum.

Krager said public health officials are worried about variants under a few circumstances. These include infecting people more efficiently and becoming more contagious; copying themselves faster and potentially lead to a more severe disease; evading the immune system — whether natural or vaccine-induced; becoming resistant to treatments; or evading detection by tests.

Delta emerging as a problemIn the past couple of months, the Delta variant has quickly emerged as one of the most common variants in the U.S., and Krager said it is believed that the Delta variant is more contagious than the Alpha variant that was first identified in the U.K., which became far and away the most dominant variant in the U.S. in the first half of 2021.

On May 22, the Delta variant made up just 2.7% of new cases. It rose to 9.5% of new cases on June 5, and 20.6% on June 19. The Delta variant is likely to become the dominant strain in the U.S. and the state before long, if it isn’t already, Krager said.

“It’s something we’re watching very closely,” he said. “Like what’s going to happen across the United States, I think the same thing’s going to happen in Washington, and I think it’s going to happen faster than some people realize.”

The Delta variant has shown signs of partial resistance to vaccines, Krager said, but the vaccines still appear to offer a sizable level of protection from the variant, with recent data suggesting up to 88% efficacy in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

In the U.K., the Delta variant is 60% more transmissible than the Alpha variant, and is possibly the most harmful of the variants in terms of severe illness. In the U.K. and Scotland, patients infected by the Delta variant are about twice as likely to require hospitalization than Alpha variant patients.

“That’s pretty significant. Alpha already had a 50-60% more severe disease, and we’re talking about twice that with the Alpha variant,” Krager said. “I do worry about especially unvaccinated people having significant numbers of hospitalizations and potentially deaths in that population as we go forward.”