Coronavirus In Pierce County: Week In Review

PIERCE COUNTY, WA — It has been a decidedly mixed week for Pierce County.

On one hand, the pandemic was worse this week than it had been since the tail end of the fourth wave of transmission in late January. From Wednesday through Friday, Pierce County has had enough new COVID-19 cases and a high enough hospitalization rate that, had the Washington State Department of Health (DOH) performed its statewide review in the latter half of the week, Pierce County would have been knocked back into Phase 1.

On the other hand, while the hospitalization rate has continued to grow, there are some very early signs that the county may have begun to curb the recent, explosive growth in transmission. Plus, phase changes have been paused to give the county time to find its footing.

As of Friday, the Tacoma - Pierce County Health Department says the county has a 14-day case rate of 372 cases per 100,000 residents. That's high — high enough that it passes the Phase 1 threshold, which is 350 cases per 100,000 —but it is down from the county's self-reported rate of 379.1 on Thursday, and the first time the case rate has declined since mid-March.

It's far too early to tell if that decline will continue, but it is reason to remain hopeful. The county only needs to get that rate down by 22 in order to remain in Phase 2, and it has nearly two weeks to do it. Tuesday, Gov. Jay Inslee ordered a statewide pause on phase changes to give case counts time to plateau and decline, and that could be what is happening in Pierce County.

Beyond that, this week's story is largely the same as last week's as health officials continue to urge Pierce County residents who have not yet been vaccinated to get an appointment as soon as they can.

To lower the barrier to entry, TPCDH has more than a dozen upcoming, free vaccine clinics that allow residents to walk up without an appointment and get a shot, no questions asked.

A full list of the Tacoma - Pierce County Health Department's upcoming vaccine clinics can be found on their website.

Some places are even giving incentives to get vaccinated, like the Tacoma Rainiers, who are offering fans a free snack and drink at a future game if they come out and get their dose.

Others institutions are even starting to require the vaccine. This week both the University of Washington and University of Puget Sound announced that students would need to get vaccinated in order to attend the upcoming fall semester.

As of the latest-available update to the DOH's COVID-19 Data Dashboard, 559,538 vaccine doses have been administered in Pierce County — enough to give one dose to roughly 62 percent of the county's population. That's lower than other large counties and one reason Pierce has fallen farther behind. For example, in neighboring King County, 1,997,761 doses have been administered, enough to give 87 percent of residents one shot.

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.