Whatcom’s COVID cases rising again, but death count stays put for first time since August

Though COVID-19 case rates continued their late April climb, Whatcom County’s COVID-related death total remained unchanged last week for the first time since early August.

Whatcom County has had 298 COVID-related deaths during the pandemic, according to the latest update Friday, April 29, on the Washington State Department of Health’s COVID-19 Data Dashboard — unchanged from a week earlier. The last time Whatcom saw its death total stay put for week was the week of Aug. 8-14, which was actually the second of two straight weeks when that number didn’t change.

The county actually did have a new death reported last week, as the state dashboard added a new death epidemiologically linked to Jan. 10 in Wednesday’s update, but Friday’s report scratched one that had previously been reported on April 5. Meanwhile, St. Joseph’s hospital in Bellingham reported its daily COVID-related patient snapshot reached double figures for the first time in nearly a month on Sunday, May 1, with 10 patients, but that went down by four as of Monday, May 2.

Overall, Whatcom County had 501 total new cases (confirmed and probable combined) reported by the state last week — its largest increase since it had 1,502 reported Feb. 6-12.