Coronavirus In Pierce County: Week In Review

PIERCE COUNTY, WA — Pierce County has now spent a full week back in Phase 2 lockdown, and local leaders are scrambling to cut coronavirus transmissions and get the county back into Phase 3.

Unfortunately, with the way case counts trended this week, it's almost more likely the county could be knocked back into Phase 1 instead.

According to the latest update to the state's COVID-19 risk assessment dashboard, Pierce County has had a rate of 324.7 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents over the past two weeks. In order to re-enter Phase 2, that rate needs to be below 200 by May 3, when the Washington State Department of Health (DOH) performs its next evaluation. If that rate grows to 350 instead (and the rate has been growing, during the DOH's first evaluation April 12 it was around 250) that would fail one of two metrics needed to remain in Phase 2.

If the county fails the second metric by having a hospitalization rate of more than 10 hospitalizations per 100,000 residents in the week ending May 3, the county would then be pushed even further back into Phase 1, imposing much stricter COVID-19 regulations.

Happily for Pierce County residents, while the hospitalization rate has grown in recent weeks, at the current rate it doesn't appear it could pass 10 without a significant surge: as of the latest update from the Tacoma - Pierce County Health Department, Pierce's hospitalization rate is about 7.2. It was 6.8 on April 12.

If the county can shrink the hospitalization rate to below five by May 3, that also would allow Pierce to re-enter Phase 3.

It's worth noting, while Pierce County is one of just three counties that failed the last evaluation and fell back into Phase 2, its current predicament is not unique: case counts are on the rise in more than half of Washington's 39 counties, and neighboring King County is in danger of falling back into Phase 2 as well.

The primary way Pierce County is trying to cut that hospitalization rate is by hastening the vaccine rollout. This week, the county announced the Tacoma Dome will be transformed into a mass vaccination clinic for the next six weeks. The local health department also announced a new vaccine site in Lakewood that allows for walk-in appointments and has launched a new "vaccine help list" service to help residents find appointments, clinics and more.

The Tacoma - Pierce County Health Department also updated their dashboard with a new feature, found here, which shows which parts of the county are the most vaccinated.

Because the county has been leaning so heavily on vaccination to address the growing transmission rate, there has been some friction between local and state leaders over Pierce County's vaccine allotment. In particular Pierce County Executive Bruce Dammeier has accused the governor of underserving the county, a charge Inslee denied at a conference Thursday.

"Pierce County is getting 100 percent of its pro-rata doses from the state of Washington," Inslee said. "This is clear, unequivocal fact and anybody who says otherwise is simply wrong."

"Vaccine allocation and distribution is a complex process," said Nick Streuli, Inslee's External Affairs Director. "At this point in time, Pierce County has received exactly 100 percent of its proportional share of vaccines from the state. They've been allocated more than 488,000 doses, and we continue to work with their public health leaders to ensure our process is working."

Pierce County can expect to see a boost in vaccinations of some kind, regardless. This week the DOH announced Washington state will be doubling its vaccination goal to 90,000 doses administered daily across the state — an optimistic goal, but one they hope is possible to meet within the coming six to eight weeks.

As of the Tacoma - Pierce County Health Department's latest update, there have been 480,850 vaccine doses administered to Pierce County residents.

Total coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths in Pierce County:

Editors note: Patch is updating these totals on a weekly, rather than daily, basis. Readers should keep in mind that the increases below represent infections and deaths over a seven-day period.

The above numbers are provided by the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department, and some numbers differ from the totals provided separately by the Washington State Department of Health.