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Last Tuesday, Jan. 4, the Washington state Department of Health reported the 10,000th death in the state from COVID-19 since record keeping began in early 2020. In Skagit County, 156 people have died in that period. There were 14 county resident deaths in December; 27 died in November. No deaths have been reported in 2022 through Jan. 6.

Since Nov. 1, 184 Skagitonians have been hospitalized, 24 since Jan. 1, 63 in December and 97 in November.

Experts are emphasizing increased hospitalizations and the stress put on healthcare systems over new case counts in the new year. “It is much more relevant to focus on the hospitalizations as opposed to the total number of cases,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, medical advisor to the president, said on ABC Jan. 3.

There were 702 total new novel coronavirus cases in Skagit County Jan. 1-6. In December, 1,388 new COVID-19 cases were recorded following 1,437 in November, for a total of 14,969 cases counted from early 2020.

Skagit County’s case rate is 906.9 per 100k over the 14 days ending Jan. 6 and the hospitalization rate is 20.7 per 100k over the last seven days. In their Jan. 5 weekly update, Skagit Public Health forecast “the state’s Data Dashboard is showing a steep increase in cases over the coming days.”

The county’s case rates have been substantially lower than Snohomish County’s 14-day case rate of 1,446.7 per 100,000, though their hospitalization rate the past seven days is lower, at 17.5 per 100,000 people. Whatcom County has 1,181.6 cases per 100,000 the last 14 days and a 7-day hospitalization rate of 15.4 per 100,000 people.

The health department notes “the most vulnerable population continues to be those who are unvaccinated, though breakthrough infections in people who are fully vaccinated are also likely to occur with the new omicron variant. Getting vaccinated remains the most effective way to prevent against severe illness, hospitalizations and death.”

Skagit County Public Health is no longer pdating ongoing COVID-19 case, hospitalization, death and demographic data on its website, providing data from DOH’s state Data Dashboard instead.

The county reports a total of 223,000 doses have been administered in Skagit County, with 78.1% of the population partially vaccinated 12 years and older, and 71.9% fully vaccinated amongst Skagitonians 12 and older.

The Seattle Times tracked the 6,000 Washington state deaths from Jan. 8, 2021-Jan. 4 2022, reporting that 4,000 Washingtonians died in 2020 from COVID-19. Half of last year’s deaths have been since Sept. 4, an indication of the effect of the delta variant taking hold in late summer and the omicron variant the last month of 2021.

In 2022 Skagit County Public Health is no longer updating ongoing COVID-19 case, hospitalization, death, and demographic data on its website. Instead, Skagitonians are asked to refer to the statewide COVID-19 Data Dashboard for all COVID-19 related data. This is the best place for state and county-level case, hospitalization and death data and vaccination data.

Skagit County had 3,105 COVID-19 cases in 2020. The 11,864 new cases in 2021 is an almost fourfold increase.