CORONAVIRUS: Tuesday 1/26/2021 roundup

| Coronavirus | West Seattle news

Vaccination acceleration is again tonight’s pandemic headline:

VACCINE UPDATE: While cautioning “we still have a long way to go,” Gov. Inslee said the vaccination pace is speeding up. 39,000 shots on Sunday, 39,000 on Monday – getting closer to the 45,000-a-daqy goal he recently announced. The feds will increase our state’s allotment by 16 percent, at least in the short term, he also announced. You can watch his briefing here.

NEWEST KING COUNTY NUMBERS: Here’s what’s in today’s daily summary from Seattle-King County Public Health – the cumulative totals:

*74,901 people have tested positive, 174 more than yesterday’s total

*1,240 people have died, 13 more than yesterday’s total

*4,736 people have been hospitalized, 19 more than yesterday’s total

*817,432 people have been tested, 1,447 more than yesterday’s total

One week ago, the totals were 72,600/1,185/4,617/801,551.

STATEWIDE NUMBERS: See them here.

NATIONAL/WORLDWIDE NUMBERS: 100.2 million cases worldwide, 25.4 million of them in the U.S. – see other nation-by-nation stats by going here.

VACCINE-INFO LINKS: The PhaseFinder is here – to determine whether you’re eligible yet – and known vaccination locations are here – but there are still NONE listed in West Seattle. The nearest ones – Sea Mar clinics in White Center and South Park – have run out of vaccine, according to online updates.

PANDEMIC PEOPLE: Health-care workers and volunteers have been called on as never before in the past year. Scroll through the Seattle-King County Public Health gallery.

NEED FOOD? Food Lifeline‘s South Park HQ offers emergency food boxes 2-5 pm Friday (January 29th), at 815 S. 96th.

GOT SOMETHING TO REPORT? westseattleblog@gmail.com or 206-293-6302, text/voice – thank you!

Stay well January 27, 2021 (6:11 am)

Recently there has been a downward trend with the number of people being tested, it seems since there has been a shift of focus from ‘testing’ to ‘vaccination.’

I am wondering about this and concerned, how does it make sense that the number of folks being tested started going down, at a time when community spread was at an all time high?

Are people being less cautious, taking less initiative to get tested? Is there an issue with testing availability? Or was there truly some sudden positive shift resulting in less need for testing?

trickycoolj January 27, 2021 (11:21 am)

My guess is through the holiday season in Nov and Dec a lot of people were getting tests to go visit family and have gatherings. Which hopefully has become more widely clear that it is still fairly risky behavior as results could be during a pre-symptomatic period or depending on the gap of time between testing and holding a gathering or traveling could still introduce infection between testing and gathering.

Flo B January 27, 2021 (7:02 am)

Per the state: Location CAN NOT be used to deny a shot. Meaning: you can go anywhere in the state to get a shot, not just the county/city you live in. You just have to find someone with vaccine…..

WSB January 27, 2021 (9:31 am)

Yes, but not everyone can just drop everything and travel for that, if they can even get an appointment. So we are specifically focusing on West Seattle. Thanks.

JJ January 27, 2021 (11:51 am)

174 positive and 19 hospitalized. 11%. Is that increasing over time? Dashboards just give hospitalizations over total population. Why I ask is that I wonder if we are testing less, if a new variant is more dangerous, if a new variant is escaping testing detection, or the number of false negatives is increasing for some other reason. I was hoping some data wonks in our community might be able to spot changes better than my scattered estimations or tell me if there really is no trend and show some numbers.

rme January 27, 2021 (12:28 pm)

I don’t have a comprehensive answer for this, but my first thought is that the hospitalizations usually reflect those who would have first tested positive a week or two ago. The hospitalization and death rates lag behind the testing numbers.

Flo B January 27, 2021 (1:28 pm)

WSB. Agreed! However, there are many of us that can ,and have made out of area appointments because of the uncertanty of when and where in WS that shots may happen.

Sorry, comment time is over.