EVERETT — Dr. George Diaz and others on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic are frustrated.
Vaccines have been widely available for months, Diaz said in an interview Wednesday. Yet unvaccinated Snohomish County residents are filling hospital beds as the fifth wave of COVID reaches alarming heights.
More than 60 people in Snohomish County are now hospitalized due to COVID-19. About 50 are at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett, said Diaz, the hospital’s section chief of infectious diseases.
Of those, virtually all were unvaccinated, he said.
“My level of concern is high,” Diaz said. “We were probably in the teens a month ago.”
In December, the most hospitalizations at one time in the county due to COVID peaked at about 110.
“I think it’s really possible that we surpass those numbers, primarily because this new variant is so contagious,” Diaz said, referring to the delta variant of the disease. “What we’ve also seen is patients coming to the hospital are often younger, and they’re still ending up in the ICU.”
Meanwhile, the number of new COVID cases in Snohomish County is rising.
The latest two-week count, ending Saturday, showed 198 infections per 100,000 residents. The previous week, it was 140.
And a reporting issue means the case count ending Saturday is probably even higher, Snohomish Health District health officer Dr. Chris Spitters said during a media briefing Tuesday.
“It looks like we’re going to be far north of 200,” he said. “This is not sustainable.”
A major factor in the fifth wave is unvaccinated people not wearing masks after the lifting of pandemic restrictions, he added. Another cause is the highly contagious delta variant.
That has public health experts, locally and statewide, calling for everyone to wear masks in public indoor settings, like grocery stores and retail shops. And if you haven’t already, get vaccinated.
“Please, look at the data, look at the people who have passed away,” Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers said Tuesday. “I want this pandemic to be over, we all do. It’s wearing on our families, our lives, our businesses, but there’s only one rational way out and it’s to get vaccinated.”
Across Snohomish County, nearly two-thirds of all eligible residents are fully vaccinated. However, that leaves hundreds of thousands of residents, some of whom are not yet eligible, without shots.
And so-called breakthrough cases — infections among vaccinated people — are continuing to occur, Spitters said. They are still rare, and illnesses tend to be more mild.
Hospitalization rates for vaccinated people are 90% lower than for those who are unvaccinated, he said.
“That’s something people need to keep in mind,” Spitters said.
Joey Thompson: 425-339-3449; jthompson@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @byjoeythompson.
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