Coronavirus

COVID-19 is on a path to runaway growth in Washington state

Washington State Department of Health (DOH) released the latest statewide situation report, which highlights alarming trends in transmission and hospitalization data.

The spread of COVID-19 continues to accelerate across most of Washington state as of the start of July, according to a report released today by the Washington State Department of Health.

Trends in both transmission and hospitalization were “alarming,” officials said.

Report findings include:

  • Transmission continues to increase or accelerate across most of Washington state and will continue to do so unless concrete steps are taken to stop the spread.
  • All indicators of the extent of viral spread are higher than last week with the exception of Yakima.
  • In both eastern and western Washington cases are increasing fastest among 20-29 year olds and are also growing in both younger and older age groups around them.
  • Hospitalization rates are just starting to increase in western WA and continue to grow across all age groups in eastern WA.
  • As transmission moves from younger adults into older more vulnerable populations, we expect new hospitalizations and eventually deaths to trend up across the state.

“This situation report shows that Washington State as a whole is in an explosive situation,” the report read. Full report here.

The graph tracks changes in the R0 (R “nought figure”), which represents the number of people one infected person will likely infect themselves. An R0 of 1 indicates each person who becomes infected will infect one other person. In that case, the epidemic continues but does not expand. An R0 greater than 1 indicates an infected individual will likely infect more than one person and the epidemic will grow. An R0 less than one means the epidemic will eventually die out. In the graph above shows that the R0 numbers for both Western Washington (purple) and Eastern Washington (Red) are now back up well above 1.