Katie Lindstrom

PACIFIC COUNTY — New cases of covid-19 continued to rise slowly in Pacific County over the past week, as hospitals, healthcare providers and public health officials raised the alarm over a seemingly imminent cascade of infections from the extremely transmissible Omicron variant.

Over the previous week, the county health department reported 34 new cases of covid-19, up from 33 the week prior. The county’s case rate per 100,000 people over a two-week period stood at 318 as of Dec. 19, up from 300 a week ago and 184 two weeks ago.

The county’s death toll remained at 38, while hospitalizations rose by just one, to 125.

Pull Quote

‘We strongly encourage people to get their booster. It’s hard kind of watching it unfold, and you see what’s going to happen and know there’s going to be another big surge.’

Katie Lindstrom

County health director

While the case rate is still below the sustained peak of the Delta wave that the county experienced this summer, county health director Katie Lindstrom said it is just a matter of time before cases begin to soar again locally.

“It’s pretty clear that Omicron is [in Washington],” Lindstrom said. “I know that in other parts of the world, like in the UK, they’re seeing surges higher than they did with Delta. [The U.S.] tends to just lag behind a little bit, and I think we’re in for it, unfortunately.”

On Monday, the CDC reported that Omicron is now the dominant variant in the U.S. and accounted for 73% of new infections nationally last week. The data showed a six-fold increase in the variant’s share of infections in a single week, leaving Delta — which accounted for more than 99% of cases as recently as the end of November — in the dust.

Omicron’s surge comes at an especially bad time, when families are coming together for the holidays. Along with getting vaccinated and boosted, Lindstrom stressed that there were several precautions people can take to reduce their exposure to the virus:

• Keep gatherings as small as possible.
• Keep windows open for better ventilation. “Improving ventilation is a strategy that is not talked about enough.”
• And, of course, stay home if you are symptomatic. “Don’t expose others, and go and get tested if you can.”

“We don’t want the holidays to be a reason that more cases happen,” Lindstrom said.

Vaccines, boosters encouraged

In addition to being incredibly contagious, Omicron has also shown to be adept at evading some of the protection offered by vaccines, even mRNA vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna that had strongly protected against severe disease and death from other variants — although recent studies are showing boosters help reignite that protection.

The country’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said on Sunday morning news programs that the Omicron variant has “an extraordinary capability of spreading” and that hospitals could become very stressed in the coming weeks because of an influx of patients, most of whom will likely be unvaccinated.

Fauci warned that there will be an increase in the number of breakthrough infections among those who received the initial two-dose series — or one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine — and strongly encouraged those who are fully vaccinated to get boosted.

“When your time comes to get boosted, get boosted. Because when you look at Omicron, all the data indicate that even with the good protection that you get — certainly against severe disease — from a two-dose [Pfizer or Moderna vaccine], when you look at what it does against Omicron it’s down considerably to a level where you really need to get boosted,” Fauci said on NBC News.

For those who remain unvaccinated, local, state and federal health officials warned that it could be a long winter. “The difference between a vaccinated and boosted person who has an infection, and someone who has an infection who’s never been vaccinated, is a major difference with regard to the risk of severity,” Fauci said.

In Pacific County, 60% of all residents have received at least one vaccine dose, 53.4% are considered fully vaccinated, and just 18.7% of the county population — nearly 4,100 people, including more than 600 in the past week — have received an additional booster dose.

For more information about available vaccines and a list of upcoming vaccine clinics in Pacific County, visit www.pacificcountycovid19.com/get-vaccinated.

“We strongly encourage people to get their booster,” Lindstrom said. “It’s hard kind of watching it unfold, and you see what’s going to happen and know there’s going to be another big surge. Back in August and September, when we were dealing with Delta — I don’t want to go through that again, but we’re gonna. I think it’s inevitable.”

Local testing availability tight

Part of the reason why cases have not yet risen significantly in Pacific County, Lindstrom said, is that there are only so many tests to go around at the moment. Testing for covid-19 remains tight within the county, as the health department continues to try and finalize an agreement with a company to provide regular testing on both ends of the county.

“The problem is that we have a severe lack of testing … There were only two days of testing total in the county last week,” Lindstrom said, adding that the relatively modest case numbers could be artificially low because of the lack of rigorous testing. She said the county’s test positivity rate has remained high since cases started rising during the Delta wave.

The health department is trying to plug that hole by finalizing an agreement with a company, Curative, that will be able to provide testing on both ends of the county on a regular basis. The department has tried for months to get a more permanent and reliable testing option.

Lindstrom said she is hopeful that the Curative would be able to begin providing regular testing in the county in short order after Christmas. Once operations are up and running, the expectation is for testing to be available at least two days a week in both south and north county. In south county, the city of Long Beach has agreed to volunteer space for testing at Veterans Field, while testing in north county is expected to take place at the Willapa Harbor Chamber Of Commerce Visitor’s Center in Raymond.

For now, Peninsula Pharmacies is continuing to offer drive-thru testing once a week in Ilwaco most weeks, and the health department is providing drive-thru testing once a week in South Bend. Hospitals are also continuing to offer testing to established patients, and the county continues to offer at-home Everlywell testing kits for people 16 and older — although they must be shipped back to a lab and do not provide a same-day result.

For more information about all testing options currently available in Pacific County, visit www.pacificcountycovid19.com/get-tested.