Spokane County Health Officer Bob Lutz continued today [Monday] to express cautious optimism about the county’s coronavirus situation.
The health district reported 90 new Covid infections over the weekend, including 24 today [Monday]. Those are some of the lowest numbers since mid-June. It continues the trend in which Spokane’s daily count has leveled off and even begun to decrease.
“Our hospitalizations maybe seem to have peaked. I know today we only had 44 individuals, again, not all of them Spokane County residents, but 44 in our local four hospitals and 22 in Kootenai, which is down from their low peak of the 30s," he said.
Idaho’s Panhandle Health District reported 30 new cases today. Washington’s Northeast Tri-County Health District reported no new cases.
Even with the news of lower numbers in Spokane County, Lutz again tempered expectations for changes in Spokane’s status in the state’s coronavirus protocols.
“Once we’ve plateaued, and hopefully we will plateau, and we continue that descent, expect an extended period of time to get down to that lower metric that would even allow us consideration to get into phase three," he said.
Lutz says the decisions about future status changes will be complicated by the upcoming flu season. Health officials are uncertain about what will happen with two major transmissible viruses in the population at the same time.