Covid-19 cases in Whatcom County by school district, February 2

Confirmed Covid-19 cases continue to grow in Whatcom County, but not at the rate they had been previously.

“We’re cautiously optimistic in the last week we’ve seen our rates start to come down a bit,” Whatcom County Health Department director Erika Lautenbach said in a January 27 press conference. “We are very grateful to the community for really taking our warnings and urgent asks seriously and we’re starting to see the results of that.”

As of February 1, Whatcom County has had a total 5,630 confirmed cases of Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic and 65 deaths, according to Washington State Department of Health (DOH) data. Five people have died in the past week and the percent of deaths per total cases is 1.1 percent.

All school districts saw a drop in case rates. Lynden school district had the highest rate of new cases in the past two weeks, with 805 confirmed cases per 100,000 people. Blaine had a rate of 324 per 100,000 in that period, which is the third lowest in the county. In total, 260 people have been hospitalized with the virus in Whatcom County.

Whatcom County had a rate of 431.9 newly diagnosed and probable cases per 100,000 people over the past two weeks. In the county, 17.6 percent of adult ICU beds were occupied by Covid-19 patients.

About 15,764 vaccine doses have been administered in the county, which is an increase of 3,968 doses since last week. Statewide, there have been 728,636 vaccine doses administered, an increase of 228,531 doses in the past week, according to state data. CDC data shows slightly different figures for Washington, with 741,769 vaccine doses administered in the state. CDC data shows 1,129,025 doses have been distributed to Washington.

About 130,908 people in Washington have received two doses of the vaccine and 599,313 have received only one dose, according to CDC data.

Washington state has had 300,018 total confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic and 14,674 probable cases (probable cases come from an antigen test but not a molecular test). About 4,316 people in Washington with the virus have died as of February 1 and 17,892 have been hospitalized.

For Whatcom County information, visit whatcomcounty.us/covidvaccine and whatcomcounty.us/coviddata. State information is available at bit.ly/3r2URJj. Vaccine locations can be found at bit.ly/3nZiMqr. For CDC data, visit bit.ly/39Kt4qh.