COVID-19 Daily Report for Mountlake Terrace and Snohomish County: May 28, 2020

The Thursday, May 28 data from the Snohomish Health District continue to reflect the strong persistence of COVID-19 infection in our area, with at least two of our selected metrics (new cases and deaths) showing disturbing increases over the past week. We are not out of the woods yet.

Incremental new cases per day (yellow chart) continues to add new cases at a fairly steady rate since the all-time low of nine on May 20, with 24 new cases added in the past 24 hours. As we pointed out in Wednesday’s report, this measure is the one to watch to determine when Snohomish County would become eligible to move to Phase 2 reopening under Gov. Jay Inslee’s criteria. These specify that counties must show fewer than 10 new cases per 100,000 population over a 14-day span to qualify for Phase 2. While several counties, mostly rural, have already qualified, Snohomish County (pop. 822,000) would have to show fewer than 82 new cases over two weeks. According to Snohomish Health District data, we fall far short of that, with 296 new cases reported in the May 15-28 timeframe. (See more details on the Governor’s criteria here.

Total Active Cases (red chart) remained steady over the past 24 hours, with 482 currently down with the virus.

Number of recovered cases (green chart) inched up slightly, adding three recoveries in the past 24 hours. The number of Snohomish County residents who have contracted the virus and recovered now stands at to 2,694. Hospitalizations (purple chart) are down slightly, with two more patients released Wednesday. The total receiving hospital care for COVID-19 now standing at 37.

Deaths (gray chart) from COVID-19 show resurgence this week, with three added Wednesday, bringing the total for the week (5/21-28) to 17. The total Snohomish County COVID-19 death toll is now 148 over the full reporting period, or 4.45% of the total number infected.