Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
LINCOLN COUNTY—It took 18 months since COVID-19 was first confirmed in the United States for Lincoln County to see its highest surge of the coronavirus to date, but August saw a spike of 180 new cases.
However, only eight cases resulted in hospitalizations. Two patients died of the virus, one age 63 and the other age 79. One of the eight hospitalizations was in a person fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
“While we have COVID patients being treated in Lincoln and Odessa hospitals at this time, we have had patients flown to Spokane and to hospitals on the west side of our state,” Lincoln County public health administrator Ed Dzedzy wrote in an email. “These were the closest facilities with the level of care needed with open beds.”
A large majority of the surge came in Davenport, with 81 new cases in the largest city in the county. Case counts were fairly high elsewhere in east county, but not to the degree of Davenport. Reardan and Edwall saw 17 new cases each, while Sprague had 14 new cases and Harrington had 11 new cases.
Only 22 of the 180 new cases in August were “breakthrough” cases, or cases amongst the fully vaccinated.
“The vaccine is proving to be very effective at preventing cases, as well as hospitalizations and deaths,” Dzedzy said.
The availability of vaccines hasn’t prompted everyone in the county to get the shot, as only 4,423 people here are fully vaccinated of an eligible 10,435 for a percentage of 42.39%.
88% of current cases are amongst the unvaccinated as the hospital struggles to staff patients with beds.
“Our local hospitals are having difficulty finding hospitals with open beds to meet the needs of their patients,” Dzedzy wrote. “We are facing healthcare system staff shortages, burnout and lack of beds making it difficult to treat not only COVID patients, but patients needing other critical lifesaving care as well.”
Health officials haven’t yet seen if there’s any COVID-19 impact from the county fair, where thousands gathered to enjoy the rodeo and fair festivities. Those numbers are expected by the weekend.
Your Local Government
Government and community meetings for Sept. 3-9
Tuesday, Sept. 7
Lincoln County Commissioners meeting at 8 a.m. at the Lincoln County Courthouse
Wednesday, Sept. 8
Reardan-Edwall School Board workshop at 6:30 p.m. in the commons
Harrington city council meeting at 7 p.m. in
City Hall
Davenport city council meeting at 7 p.m. in
City Hall
Sprague-Lamont School Board meeting at 7 p.m. in Sprague conference room
Drew Lawson is the editor of the Davenport Times. He is a graduate of Eastern Washington University.
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