Spokane County’s Labor Day-related Covid spike continued over the weekend.
Health Officer Bob Lutz reported 228 new cases in the three-day Saturday-to-Monday period.
“This is definitely that spike that we, unfortunately, were concerned about. We hope that, we certainly believe, that our counts will go down as we are able to aggressively address these current cases," Lutz said.
And, he says, they’ll go down when people get back to wearing masks and distancing themselves from others.
With the weather beginning to cool, though, Lutz says he’s concerned those counts may continue to stay high.
“It’s that combination of Covid-19, all the indoor risks associated with that, and then also concurrent respiratory infections that we know always occur this time of year," he said.
Such as the flu. That’s motivating health officials to encourage people of all ages to get flu shots, even if they traditionally don’t. One good omen, he says, is that the magnitude of the flu season could be less this year because of the measures people are taking to avoid the spread of Covid.