6 Deaths, 797 More Coronavirus Cases Reported In Washington

SEATTLE, WA — State health officials confirmed 6 new deaths linked to COVID-19 in Washington and 797 new confirmed cases of the disease Monday, continuing a recent trend of record high daily case counts but fewer deaths than during the first peak of the pandemic in late March and early April.

Deaths Monday were reported in Benton, King, Kitsap, Pierce, Skagit, and Snohomish counties.

The new numbers mean a total of 47,743 cases of the coronavirus have been confirmed in the state since the outbreak began, and 1,453 people have died.

A total of 826,354,466 Washingtonians have been tested for the coronavirus, meaning roughly 5.8 percent of tests come back positive.

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Catch up on the latest developments:

UW Medicine’s coronavirus draws closer to human trials

Several potential vaccines to treat the coronavirus are moving forward towards human trials with the hopes that one could turn the tide against the pandemic.

One a vaccine developed by the Kaiser Permanente Washington Research Institute in Seattle is about to enter its final trial stage on July 27, when 30,000 people will be tested to see if their shots are strong enough.

Monday, UW Medicine announced that the latest tests and models of their RNA vaccine were also delivering very promising results. According to UW, a successful vaccine would need to meet three broad criteria.

• How many doses does it take? Ideally a vaccine would provide immunity quickly, with just one or two doses.

• Is it durable? How long will the immunization provided by the vaccine last?

• Is it effective in all demographics? The elderly often cannot safely take vaccines, which is a problem because they’re the age group that needs the new vaccine the most.

They say, based on recent finds, they’re hopeful that their RNA test could meet those requirements, and it’s easy to produce en masse and relatively shelf-stable for a vaccine.

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“We saw robust immune responses just in a single dose within two weeks after immunization,” said Deborah Fuller, Microbiology Professor for the University of Washington School of Medicine. “I hadn’t ever seen that before with any other candidate nucleic acid vaccine so that got us very excited, and we realized that we may be on to a rapid response vaccine to COVID-19.”

Now that they’ve tested their vaccine on mice and run models predicting reactions with primates, they’re gearing up to also enter human testing trials by late summer. Once they’ve begun, if they’re successful a full vaccine could be completed within 18 months.

“There’s a heightened sense of energy, or purpose, and the whole mission in terms of being able to get this out,” said Fuller.

Read more: UW Medicine: COVID-19 Vaccine Delivers ‘Promising Results’

Washington returns Safe Start phase applications

Washington state’s 39 counties will not be allowed to enter the next phase of Gov. Inslee’s Safe Start plan until July 28 at the earliest. Now the state says, when the pause on application and reopenings is lifted, counties will need to start the application process over.

When the governor first announced the freeze on forward movement through the phases, seven counties had already submitted applications to enter the next phase: Clark, Cowlitz, Jefferson, Kitsap, Klickitat, San Juan, and Walla Walla counties. Today, the state officially returned those applications to the counties, and told them to apply again anew when the freeze ends. That freeze is scheduled to end next Tuesday but officials warn may not if the state continues to see record high daily coronavirus case counts, as it has over the past few weeks.

To complete an application, a county needs to conduct several rounds of voting, from their health boards and hospitals, to county councils and executives, who must unanimously approve of further reopenings.

While counties wait out the pause, health officials continue to warn: wear facial coverings, keep a safe physical distance from others, and practice good hygiene.

“It remains critical that everyone continues to do their part to slow the spread of COVID-19,” said Washington Secretary of Health John Wiesman. “Wear a face covering in any public setting or place where you can’t keep at least 6 feet of distance from people who are not members of your immediate household. In addition, stay home as much as possible, limit the number of people that you interact with, wash your hands and cover your coughs and sneezes.”

Total coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths by county:

The above numbers are provided by the state Department of Health, and some numbers differ from the totals provided separately by county health agencies.

[NORECIRC]

This article originally appeared on the Lakewood-JBLM Patch