King County now has ‘medium’ community level of COVID, per CDC guidance

King County has moved from a “low” community COVID-19 level to “medium,” per federal guidance, as infection rates increase, the county’s top health officer said Monday.

Despite the movement upward within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention community levels, there are no plans to reintroduce past mitigation requirements, such as an indoor masking mandate or vaccine checks.

Case rates have slowly been ticking up in the county since the end of March, after statewide mask mandates came to an end and as omicron’s infectious subvariant, BA. 2, took hold. As of Monday, King County saw a 19% increase in cases compared to the prior week and was averaging a seven-day rate of about 214 new infections per 100,000 people, county health officer Dr. Jeff Duchin said during a news conference.

“This was not unanticipated as the more contagious BA. 2 variant spread both locally and nationally,” Duchin said. “… The CDC medium risk category is not a magic threshold meaning the COVID-19 pandemic locally is suddenly or fundamentally different, or that we’re approaching a crisis level. But it does tell us that COVID-19 infection risk is increasing for individuals and the community.”

“We should see this yellow traffic light as a ‘slow down’ and use this opportunity to lower our risk and the risk for those around us, and to think more about how we’ll manage the ongoing challenge of COVID-19 sustainably over the long term,” he said.