County sees rise in COVID cases

Hospitalizations low, despite ‘pretty high’ cases

Pandemic restrictions might be mostly gone, but COVID-19 is still prominent throughout Mason County.

Director of Community Services Dave Windom updated the Board of Health during Tuesday’s meeting. Mason County Division of Emergency Management reported a seven-day case rate per 100,000 people of 161.5 as of May 22, and a 14-day case rate of 292.5. The county reported 38 cases from May 20 to 22.

Windom said that is an undercount because it only accounts for PCR tests, not the at-home tests that turn up positive but are not reported to the state disease registry system.

“What it doesn’t take into account is all the people who are taking the home test or antigen testing that’s not getting counted in the system, so I think we’re shy probably by about a factor of six,” Windom said. “There’s just a lot of disease out in the community right now.”

Mason County is 59.2% fully vaccinated.

Windom said enough people in the community health building have gotten sick that they instituted masks again “just to try to tamp it down for a week, maybe two weeks and get a disease cycle under us and get it cleared out.”

He said the particular version of COVID in the community is the BA.2 subvariant, which is about 40% more transmissive than omicron.

“It is really getting past the other protections we have in place,” Windom said. “People are actually not winding up in the hospital and our death rate has flatlined at zero which is good. That piece has been good and our hospitalization rates are positive, but the amount of people who are sick is pretty high out there.”

Windom said to be aware of social gatherings and advised wearing a mask if you’re uncomfortable. He also stated from his own experience contracting COVID-19, if you are symptomatic, you have a five-day window to get Paxlovid or Remdesivir, which can improve symptoms as long as it is done within five days.

“One of the problems we’re having is people, from the time they’re symptomatic to the time they’re testing positive has been about three days, so by the time you take your test, you only have two days left to get into your doctor to get the therapeutics and have them be effective,” Windom said. “What we’re trying to pass ont o people is if you become symptomatic, and you test positive, get into your doctor right away. We’re trying to do an end-around with that across the state with other health officers in contracting with a third-party provider to do telehealth, telemedicine so all a person would have to do is show their test, the doctor runs through all of their medications to make sure there is no drug interaction problems, runs through their conditions to make sure there’s no contraindications and then they’re able to get a prescription to take to Fred Meyer or Safeway or one of the pharmacies that does have one of the medications on hand and they can get it within 10 or 15 minutes without having to see a provider.”

Windom said he got Paxlovid through the COVID center on the last appointment of the last day it would be effective for him and it helped him recover more quickly.

If you need an at-home COVID test, several Mason County government buildings have free at-home tests available.