Spokane County’s health officer says the latest computer modeling shows the county may be only a few weeks away from the high point of its omicron surge. Dr. Francisco Velazquez says the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle predicts western Washington will hit that point first.
“The state of Washington will peak around the end of the month. We will peak shortly thereafter, so we could start to see also a downward trend within a few weeks of that as we’re seeing in other parts of the country," he said.
Spokane County’s daily case rate began climbing in late December and hit a new, one-day pandemic high on Saturday with more than 1,300 new cases. Tuesday’s count was only 242, but health district officials say the state is working through a big backlog of cases. They expect Spokane to continue reporting several hundred new cases each day for the foreseeable future.
