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Wednesday’s data from the Snohomish Health District report a sharp rise in the number of new and active cases (yellow and red bar charts respectively), with 63 new cases since Tuesday, pushing the number of total active cases to 950, the highest recorded over the full reporting period. This is reflected in the countywide trend line (upper line, countywide and city line charts) which shows a noticeable uptick. As of today, 2,640 Snohomish County residents have contracted the virus over the reporting period.
In contrast to these one-day sharp spikes, numbers hospitalized with COVID-19 (purple chart) continues to remain relatively level, with 58 currently hospitalized, an increase of five since yesterday. Numbers of recovered cases (green chart) are continuing their slow upward trend, with 19 more Snohomish County residents joining the ranks of those who have beaten back the disease.
The good news is that for the second day in a row, no new deaths due to COVID-19 (gray chart) were reported in Snohomish County. Over the full reporting period, 107 have died in the county as a result of the virus, a rate of 4.2 percent of the total infected.
Several of our readers have requested information on numbers of tests administered. Currently the Snohomish Health District does not include numerical testing data in their daily updates. We agree that this would be valuable to present, as it would have a significant bearing on how to interpret the various other data sets. We have requested that they do this and will include it with our daily updates should it become available.
Note that the Snohomish Health District began reporting number of recoveries by city Wednesday, and we have modified our local cities table to include these. For the individual cities, we estimate the number of currently active cases by subtracting the total recoveries from the case totals for the full reporting period. By contrast, for the county as a whole we estimate currently active cases by subtracting the sum of total recovered (1,583 today) plus total deaths (107 today) from the number of cases since reporting began (2,640). The health district reports deaths countywide only and does not break them down by individual city.
The local numbers for April 29, 2020:
— By Larry Vogel
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So that would mean social distancing isn’t working?? Since some just started to go back to work this wouldn’t be long ago to say it’s spiking.
No! If we didn’t have social distancing, the data would be far, far worse!
Its hard to know exactly how much social distancing helped, did it prevent people from getting sick or just shift the date that they get sick? If we get a vaccine out in the near future then it goes more toward the saving lives side of the scale. If a vaccine comes out next year then for most we just shifted them getting the virus from March-May to June-Aug or beyond.
At this time the only way to survive Covid is to get it and get better, until then we are still waiting to get it.
Since the vast majority of people will have no or mild symptoms the sooner they get it the better. We probably would have been better off if we had of sheltered the 20% of the population considered vulnerable and had everyone else do a functional social distancing similar to what we will be doing in June-July.
Infected people passed the infection on to non infected people. The only way to understand the spike is look at who got sick and try to figure out where they contracted the virus. If we all worn a home depot bucket over our heads with a plastic shield to see infection rate would probably not spike.
We just may need to come up with a better design.
I just checked and the Snohomish health district reports 22 deaths for Edmonds, as of 4/29/20. Not sure where the information is coming from that they don’t report individual cities, it came right up for me. The health district identifies both the case counts for cities, the sources, and both the case counts and death counts for those entities.
Thanks for pointing this out, Diane – I just found the deaths by city numbers also. Don’t know how I missed these, so I’m really glad you posted this. They will appear in updates from here on!
For context the 2919-2020 flu season, according to the Snohomish County health department reported 9 deaths.
Future spikes could be a function of more testing not more cases. There could have been more cases a month ago but we just didn’t know people were positive. Probably the numbers to watch for change is people hospitalized, in ICU and deaths. Though with deaths if we are counting them now different than in the past that can mix up the numbers as well. What we really want to see in the next couple of months, short of a vaccine, is high positive with low death numbers.
Quite often in rapidly changing situations like this, reporting lags, and then later data include what was previously missing. In this case, that spike comes right after a weekend that is noted on the charts as having no data reported, and the gap is interpolated. So there weren’t really four days of 31 new cases on each day from the 24th to the 27th, there are no data for the 25th and 26th. I suspect the 27th is also not a new value, but probably an unadjusted value from SCHD. The next 2 values could easily be the “sorting it out” days to follow. Wait a couple more days and see if high values persist.
The reason we have used social distancing, as THE weapon, is because it is all we have to fight the most lethal affects of the virus at this point in time. The big missing link has been plentiful and accurate testing which would have allowed us to rapidly identify infection and break out points and track down those who may have been infected. Then we could have isolated the truly vulnerable to death from the virus from those who would have a mild case, get over it, and can return to work. The shut down and blow to the economy would have, arguably, been much less.
We were warned of what would happen when (not if) a pandemic hit and our leaders chose to ignore the warnings and not be prepared. Now we, including our leaders, are paying the price; many the ultimate price.
New York and other hot spots are the prime example of what happens if you just allow everyone to get it, to develop herd immunity. You get the immunity at the price of overwhelming numbers of coffins, people in ICU, over worked and under protected first-responders and medical personnel who also get sick and result in more deaths in their ranks. Should Cuomo and Blasio share some of the blame for not being prepared? Yes they should. Are they doing their best to try to recover with as few deaths as possible? Yes they are. That’s all any of our elected leaders can do at this point. They all dropped the ball from the top down and some will look to others to blame and some will man and woman up and do the best they can, right or wrong since they chose to be unprepared in the first place.
Herd immunity is the answer. The $64,000 question is , how do we get there? The virus caused the recession and probable depression and the only way out is to beat the virus one way or another. Orders to go back to work will accomplish nothing but more sickness and death and I suspect that is right around the corner, short of that miracle President Trump is predicting. I hope he is right about that miracle
Clint, herd immunity needs around 60-70 percent with immunity of some sort. For the US thats about 200m folks. For Edmonds that’s about 25-30,000 folks. Hard to get to those numbers and we don’t have gates to keep others out.
We may have those numbers already. More and more people are getting tested that had the disease last November. That changes all the numbers.
I would like to see more I depth numbers. (Studies) of these people who died, how many came from nursing homes, veteran homes, retirement homes, etc. we need to be way more specific where the deaths came from. (Was clustering involved?)
I would love to see how many died in senior centers, veteran homes., retirement facilities. (Clustering) also to include the workers. There has to be patterns..what are they?
I would like to see more I depth numbers. (Studies) of these people who died, how many came from nursing homes, veteran homes, retirement homes, etc. we need to be way more specific where the deaths came from. (Was clustering involved?)
Hi Joy – check the Snohomish Health District COVID Count Info page here: https://www.snohd.org/499/COVID-19-Case-Count-Info. Scroll down about 3/4 of the way, and you’ll find death counts for several local long-term care facilities.
Great information. We have had (snohomish county 109 deaths. (Of those, only 7 did not have underlying illnesses. (The rest did)
Edmonds has had 23 deaths. The information I’m looking for is of those 23 deaths, were these from nursing homes, on street contact, workers? Where?
This information creates a real picture. If 20 people from Edmonds died from nursing homes, retirement communities, etc and only 3 died from street contact?? You see what numbers mean.
58 out of 102 in the county were community contact about 57%. One would guess the same is about true for Edmonds. What would be you point or recommendation or personal action be if Street contact was 3, 12, or 20.
I am not trying to be glib just trying to find out what we should do if the numbers for Edmonds is different than the county.
Street Contact then what Action to take
3 then don’t go to a nursing home, someone already did and infected folks and killed 20 you can catch it there
12 still don’t go to a nursing home it’s not safe because someone brought in the virus to vulnerable people
20 sign me up, it may be the safest place in town, but don’t let any sick people in
Sick people endanger well people. We need workable ways to keep sick people away from well people.
Those who have been isolated for 30 days probably are not sick. They can all go to the same place and do what that want.