More WA Covid-19 hospitalizations, more deaths, and plans for a vaccine rollout

Signs of light ahead for many of us, as a Covid-19 vaccine is authorized Wednesday in Britain. This, as the levels of coronavirus are at their highest levels yet in the United States.

Here's an update on Covid-19 in Washington State from KUOW’s Anna Boiko-Weyrauch.

We are in an incredible wave of Covid cases in the state. And it wasn't clear until now, but more and more people are starting to die from Covid. The average has doubled from about five people a day in September, to 10 people a day now, and the trend looks to be rising.

Another big trend is that there was a huge jump in the number of patients hospitalized in the latter half of November. Now, those numbers are the most they've been since the beginning of the pandemic, and bigger than a wave of hospitalizations we saw in March and April.

As we speak, in Washington there are over 1,000 people in the hospital with Covid. That's double what it was about a month ago.

Washington state is adopting the CDC's new quarantine guidelines. That means if you were exposed to somebody with Covid, instead of staying away from other people for 14 days, you only have to stay away from others for 10 days, or seven days if you get a test.

The shorter quarantine is only if you have not had symptoms. If you do have symptoms, you still have to quarantine for 14 days.

Vaccination plans

We learned that people who live or work at places like nursing homes, or other long term care facilities, they'll be included with the very, very first folks who get the vaccine. That's a change that comes from new CDC recommendations this week. Those groups will join people who are already at the front of the line — health care workers who are caring for Covid patients.

Also, the state is doing some training exercises to run through shipping the vaccine in the special packaging that keeps it at super low temperatures. And, we still don't know where exactly the first doses will be distributed, but more than 100 places like clinics, pharmacies and hospitals have applied to the state and they've been approved. There could be more information on that next week.

Listen to the interview by clicking the play button above.