Nine New COVID Cases In San Juans

Contributed Image/CDC

From San Juan County

Since the last update on Thurs­day, Dec. 31, total cas­es in San Juan Coun­ty have increased from 79 to 88.

Eight of the new cas­es are on San Juan Island, and one is on Orcas Island.

Approx­i­mate­ly 28 indi­vid­u­als who are close con­tacts of pos­i­tive cas­es are cur­rent­ly in active quarantine.

Orcas Island

The new case on Orcas Island is due to off-island trav­el. This is the only pos­i­tive case being active­ly mon­i­tored on Orcas Island at this time.

Lopez Island

There are no new cas­es and no pos­i­tive cas­es being active­ly mon­i­tored on Lopez Island at this time.

San Juan Island

Of the eight new cas­es on San Juan Island the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion is known:

There are three sep­a­rate house­hold group­ings of two cas­es each on San Juan Island. Four of these cas­es have been tied to off-island trav­el, and the oth­er two are sus­pect­ed but not con­firmed to have orig­i­nat­ed from an off-island visitor.

The remain­ing two cas­es are not con­nect­ed to each oth­er or any pre­vi­ous case. The trans­mis­sion source for these cas­es is off-island travel.

Though the major­i­ty of these cas­es are relat­ed to hol­i­day or recre­ation­al trav­el, not all off-island trav­el is due to hol­i­day or recre­ation­al trav­el. Work, med­ical appoint­ments, fam­i­ly emer­gen­cies, and oth­er sit­u­a­tions can all require off-island travel.

There are sev­en pos­i­tive cas­es being active­ly mon­i­tored on San Juan Island at this time. Note that the tim­ing of test­ing, test results and symp­tom onset could mean that a new­ly report­ed pos­i­tive case could be out­side of their iso­la­tion period.

This is why there are more new cas­es (9) than there are active­ly mon­i­tored pos­i­tive cas­es (8).

Overall

It is clear that increased hol­i­day trav­el has result­ed in increased cas­es. This is in no way sur­pris­ing and is being seen across WA and the Unit­ed States. What this means is that cas­es will con­tin­ue to increase for the next week or two as a result of that trav­el, and per­haps longer depend­ing on the num­ber of addi­tion­al cas­es that result from this dra­mat­ic uptick.

The nine new cas­es in San Juan Coun­ty have result­ed in rel­a­tive­ly few close con­tacts, near­ly all of whom are imme­di­ate house­hold con­tacts of the pos­i­tive indi­vid­u­als. This is because those who have trav­eled have made a very con­scious effort to self-quar­an­tine upon return to the islands, even if they were not expe­ri­enc­ing any symp­toms. While avoid­ing trav­el is always best, if you choose to trav­el, please don’t go to work, social­ize, send you chil­dren to child­care, or oth­er­wise make deci­sions that could jeop­ar­dize the health of the com­mu­ni­ty upon return home.

In addi­tion to test­ing news, vac­cines are clear­ly the pri­ma­ry top­ic of COVID dis­cus­sion at this time. 

Cur­rent pos­i­tive case num­bers are avail­able online at the San Juan Coun­ty Case Count page. As indi­cat­ed on that page, these num­bers are only updat­ed after case con­fir­ma­tion is com­plete, usu­al­ly dai­ly. It is pos­si­ble that oth­er infor­ma­tion sources in the com­mu­ni­ty may be quick­er to report on new cas­es, but ensur­ing pri­va­cy and accu­ra­cy is crit­i­cal for this offi­cial infor­ma­tion source.

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