Health officer: Models suggest 350-650 Grant County residents already infected with COVID-19

GRANT COUNTY — Dr. Alexander Brzezny, Grant County health officer, said at a Monday morning briefing that models indicate between 350 and 650 people in Grant County have been infected with the novel coronavirus,

Pointing to the 88 confirmed cases reported as of Monday morning — since increased to 90 — Brzezny said that the county has likely discovered only a sliver of those sickened with COVID-19.

“Those individuals are often going to be young, they will not be going to doctors,” Brzezny said at a meeting of Unified Command, a joint task force made up of the county health district and sheriff’s office. “But they are listening, we hope, to what we told them to do, which is stay home if you’re sick.”

However, Brzezny noted that not all of those hundreds of individuals are still actively spreading the disease, which typically is no longer contagious after a couple of weeks. Of the 90 individuals who had at some point tested positive as of Monday evening, 14 had recovered to the point that they no longer needed to be placed under quarantine, the health district wrote in a daily update.

Grant County ranks 12th among the state’s 39 counties for most confirmed cases, Jones said, and though it represents a small percentage of the state’s total cases, officials warned Monday that there are still troubling signs.

“We are seeing improvements across our state, and folks are staying home,” said health district administrator Theresa Adkinson. “But here in Grant County we are still very concerned by the number of cars we are seeing on the roadways, the businesses that deem themselves essential, when that’s questionable with some of them.”

Grant County isn’t seeing the dramatic flattening of the curve — the rate of newly infected patients and their potential to overwhelm the health care system — that is being seen in Puget Sound, said Brzezny, who theorized that local residents were not adhering as well to social distancing guidelines.

“We should be aiming for 75 percent reduction in human-to-human contact in order to see a drop in our numbers,” Brzezny said.

While new cases continue to tick upward in Quincy, which had the county’s first confirmed case and most cases so far, Brzezny noted that Warden, Othello, Mattawa, Royal City and Moses Lake have seen the quickest growth in the last week.

Another concerning factor, Brzezny added, was the percentage of tests from Grant County that came back positive.

“We should be seeing six to eight percent of all the individuals we are testing as coming back positive,” Brzezny said. “We are seeing in the neighborhood of 12 percent in our county, which means we are still a county seeing a growth in cases.

“So please, when you go into the community,” Brzezny added, “consider yourself infected, consider those around you to be infected, and behave accordingly.”