Pacific County Health Department announced last week that a 10th COVID-19 case was discovered. This individual, a resident of Willapa Harbor Health and Rehabilitation, tested positive when the county started testing all residents of care facilities.
"Right now there is a state health directive around getting nursing homes and assisted living with memory care attached tested," said Pacific County Health Department Services Program Manager Stephanie Michael. "We know that there is a high incidence of mortality once there is an outbreak in one of these facilities. This is part of our mobile strike team which has the ability to go out to a congregate living facility or a congregate work facility and complete that testing in a timely manner. That way we can detect any positive cases and therefore get them into quarantine and isolation situations to limit the spread."
"This is not considered an outbreak because it is an isolated case so far," Pacific County Emergency Operations Center Kathy Spoor.
The resident is asymptomatic and has been in isolation since the test result was reported. Since the positive report, all the staff have been tested and so far the results have been negative.
"We are thinking that this might be a false positive, it is rare when it happens, but it can happen," said Spoor. "So this person has been retested and we are awaiting results back on that as well."
The Pacific County Health Department is still investigating this case and working on contact tracing to see where this resident contracted the coronavirus. So far there is little information since the facility has not allowed visitors to come into the facility since the pandemic started.