WASHINGTON, USA — The Spokane Regional Health District (SRHD) reported 350 new COVID-19 cases as of Wednesday with a slight decline in hospitalizations from the day before.
As of Sept. 29, SRHD is reporting that 145 patients are hospitalized across Spokane County. That is a decrease of around 26 patients, however, it is not known if those patients were simply discharged from the hospital or if they died. This is because it takes several days to verify if the patient died of COVID-19.
As of Tuesday, Sept. 28 SRHD reported 18 new deaths in the past week. In Wednesday's numbers they reporter 842 total deaths in the County. The total number of cases is now 66,042.
Across the border in North Idaho, there were 191 new cases reported with over 2,024 people hospitalized. As of Sept. 29, there were 475 COVID-19 related deaths in Northern Idaho.
On Wednesday, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Idaho Gov. Brad Little both traveled to the Inland Northwest to talk about the COVID-19 situations in their respective states. While in Spokane Inslee spoke of the strain put on local hospitals due to COVID-19.
He said that nearly 2,000 non-emergency surgeries have been canceled because there was no room to care for those patients.
During his visit to Northern Idaho, Gov. Little toured a monoclonal antibody treatment center run by Heritage Health at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds. It aims to treat the symptoms of COVID-19 before patients need to be hospitalized for severe cases.
At Kootenai Health, they reached a grim milestone reporting a record 34 COVID-19 deaths throughout the month.