Officials adjusting COVID-19 tracing

As COVID-19 infections continue to plummet, Washington health districts are making a few minor changes in the way they report daily cases.

Chris Skidmore, director of Whitman County Public Health, said Wednesday that following a directive from the Washington State Health Department, local health districts will shift away from contact tracing on individual cases to focusing on more congregate settings such as schools, prisons and long-term health care facilities.

“We’re going to report every positive case that we become aware of but will concentrate case investigation efforts and tracing on high-risk, congregate settings,” Skidmore said.

Early on in the pandemic, health districts began reporting daily case numbers as well as deaths. State health department websites provide even more details, including the number of vaccinations in each county and infections in specific demographic groups, such as age and those in prisons or long-term health care facilities.

Skidmore said cases have fallen sharply in the past few weeks, following the national trend of the omicron variant of COVID-19.

“Really what we’re seeing is a 50% reduction in case counts every week,” Skidmore said. “We hope that will continue for several weeks until we get to what it was before the omicron wave.”

As far as what might lie ahead, “we’re kind of waiting to see what’s on the horizon. We don’t know if any variant is causing trouble in other parts of the world, but we would be keeping an eye on things,” Skidmore said.

Garfield County announced on its website Tuesday that it will only be updating its numbers when daily case counts exceed four active cases. Officials at the health department did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Tara Macke, spokeswoman for Public Health – Idaho North Central District, said that “at this time there has been no change in the direction provided by the state of Idaho regarding COVID investigations. Until changes are announced to us we will continue to investigate COVID-19 as we have in the past and report all cases in our daily data.”

Public Health – Idaho North Central District reported 20 new cases Wednesday, including two in Clearwater County, four in Latah County and 14 in Nez Perce County. No new cases were reported for Idaho and Lewis counties.

Whitman County reported 33 new cases; Garfield and Asotin counties did not report.

The Washington State Department of Corrections listed 10 prisons and work release facilities currently on outbreak status. That is a decline by 50% of facilities on outbreak status from Jan. 24, the department said.

The department announced an update to prison and work-release visitation status Tuesday. Changes in policy and other news items can be found online at bit.ly/3h9pdWT.

Hedberg may be contacted at khedberg@lmtribune.com.