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57 New Covid Cases Reported In Spokane County; Playgrounds Reopen

Spokane County has 57 new confirmed cases of Covid-19, according to Health Officer Bob Lutz. That pushes the county over the 700 mark.

Lutz attributes some of that to increased activity during a nice Memorial Day, now nearly two weeks in the past. And some, he says, is simply due to more testing.

“I was just doing some number crunching and, just over the two weeks that we went into phase two, we’ve done, as of yesterday [Thursday], 3,900 tests, whereas the previous two weeks, we have done 2,300 tests. I can’t do the math, percentage-wise, but that’s a pretty exponential increase in number of tests. As we do more testing, we will find more cases and as we do more focused testing, we will definitely find clusters," he said.

Such as the Philadelphia Macaroni factory cluster. Lutz also mentioned a few small clusters, some related to workplaces and one or two to long-term care facilities. He says the county has been receiving help, this week, from the Washington Department of Health to trace cases. The county also reported 22 new cases yesterday and double digit increases in the few days before that.

Despite those increases, Lutz says only 10 or 11 people of the 200 more new confirmed cases, have required hospitalization. Eight are now recovering in hospitals.

One other note, Lutz also issued an order allowing playgrounds for children to reopen in Spokane County. He had ordered them closed in March as a way to prevent the spread of the virus.