COVID-19 case counts in Whatcom County peaked more than two weeks ago, and a Whatcom County health officer didn’t make any promises but said he is hopeful the two-year-old pandemic is heading in a good direction.
The state Department of Health’s COVID-19 dashboard for Whatcom County shows that the seven-day average of new daily cases peaked at 547 on Jan. 13. Data collected since then is provisional and may contain errors, but the trend line is clearly pointed in the right direction.
“I do think we are hopeful as this trends downward,” health officer Greg Thompson told the Whatcom County Health Board in a virtual meeting Tuesday. “We’ve got more immunity in our population … that should hopefully slow the impact of any potential future variants that come.”
Thompson mentioned an estimate that anticipates more than 90% of the U.S. population will have some type of immunity by the end of February — whether through vaccination, infection, or a combination of the two.
“I think we’re in a better place than we’ve ever been,” he said, although he added it’s too early to stop wearing face coverings and taking other precautions. Health officials have begun conversations about when these safety measures might be dropped, Thompson said.
While the outlook may be bright for a pandemic-weary community, PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center in Bellingham is not in a good place yet. According to numbers Thompson had obtained just before the Feb. 1 Health Board meeting, St. Joe’s had 239 patients — with a capacity for 238. Of those, 53 patients had tested positive for COVID-19. Generally, Thompson said, 10% to 20% of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 at St. Joe’s have “incidental COVID,” meaning they were admitted to the hospital for some other reason and happened to test positive for the virus that causes COVID-19.
Earlier in January, St. Joe’s recorded its highest patient count ever, at 270, Thompson said.
Meanwhile, the number of deaths in Whatcom County is expected to continue climbing. The county has reported 41 COVID-19-related deaths from Nov. 28 to Jan. 22. The Department of Health website indicates 234 people in Whatcom County have died from COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.
“We do expect deaths to peak in the next few weeks,” Thompson said.
Dr. Thompson reinforced the message that getting vaccinated against COVID-19 and getting an additional booster shot is the best way to protect against serious illness or death.
Data that Thompson presented to the Health Board indicated that someone who had completed the initial vaccination and then received a booster was 40 to 50 times less likely to be hospitalized than someone who was unvaccinated. Death rates were 68 times higher among unvaccinated patients than those who had received the booster.
A recent Department of Health report shows that nearly two-thirds of the COVID-19 cases in Whatcom County from February through December 2021 were among unvaccinated individuals.
Health Board member Kathy Kershner asked Thompson during the meeting to weigh in on the effectiveness of ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment. Kershner is among the seven members of the Health Board, who are all elected County Council members.
Kershner said she believed scientific studies in other countries showing ivermectin’s effectiveness were being suppressed. Ivermectin is approved as a treatment for certain tropical diseases in humans and to treat or prevent parasites in animals. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment.
Thompson said three large and competent studies on ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment either showed no effectiveness or were terminated early because test subjects receiving ivermectin weren’t seeing any benefit.
“I don’t think there is an effort to suppress ivermectin as is sometimes stated,” Thompson said. “I think there is a lack of efficacy.”
Board member Carol Frazey followed Kershner’s discussion of ivermectin with a message she hoped would come across clearly from the Health Board: “Please get vaccinated. Please get boosted. It is saving lives.”
