Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department announcement.
COVID-19 will likely be with us for some time. As we continue to evolve our COVID-19 data reporting, you’ll soon see changes to our weekly reports and data dashboards.
Keeping you informed.
Our goal is to keep you informed during the pandemic. We give you accurate information to protect you and your family. In May, we made a series of changes to help:
- We added the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) community level to our main dashboard. CDC bases its prevention recommendations on those levels.
- More home testing means not all positive cases are being counted. While we still report case rate, we added the weekly trend to help provide more context.
- Hospitalization rate is one of the most reliable indicators of COVID-19’s impact on our community. We made that data more prominent on the dashboard.
- Vaccine booster shots became an important part of COVID-19 protection. We changed our vaccine data dashboard to include the percentage of you who are up-to-date. (Hint: Not enough of you!)
- Reporting requirements eased for schools, decreasing usefulness of the data. We removed those numbers from our reporting.
More changes.
Now, we’re ready to improve our dashboard again.
Fewer businesses are reporting cases. Business outbreak data is now less reliable. This could lead to biased reporting and misinterpretation.
Starting this week, we’ll stop our weekly reports of outbreaks.
This doesn’t mean we’ll stop monitoring outbreaks. We’ll still track them internally and focus on partnering with businesses to limit the spread of COVID-19.
You can help stop outbreaks. If you feel sick, stay home, get tested and use CDC’s quarantine and isolation tool to see the next steps you should take.
More data coming.
In May, we told you about the start of wastewater testing in Pierce County. A second wastewater plant is now testing for COVID-19. We are in the early stages of reviewing the data. It will take more time before it gives us a clear picture of local disease activity. We’ll provide more information once we get it.
We’ll continue to send out our case and hospitalization report on Tuesdays and update those numbers on our dashboard 3 times a week. These numbers help us measure our COVID-19 community level.
We’ll continue to report our vaccination numbers, although we are moving this report to every other Thursday instead of weekly. Getting vaccinated is the best way to protect you and your loved ones from severe illness.
Everyone 6 months and older should get vaccinated and everyone 5 and older should get a booster dose of COVID-19 vaccine.
Our current COVID-19 numbers.
Our 7-day case rate is 213.6: about the same as last week’s case rate.
Our 7-day hospitalization rate is 8.2: up 12.3% from last week.
Multiple Omicron variants are keeping COVID-19 case and hospital rates elevated. We know increased home test usage means the case rate is higher than we are seeing. But hospitalizations and deaths remain well below the peaks we saw in January. Vaccinations and treatment are helping lower serious disease outcomes.
Everyone should continue safe practices:
- Get vaccinated and boosted!
- If you are sick, stay home.
- Wash your hands regularly.
- Get tested if you have symptoms or have been exposed.
- If you test positive, see if our Test to Treat program is right for you.
- Consider wearing a mask in crowded public spaces.
- Stay up to date on our latest information when you sign up for the Your Reliable Source blog.
