COVID-19

COVID-19 UPDATE

Please note: This information is from April 25, 2022. For the most recent data in King County please visit the COVID-19 community level data dashboard and the COVID-19 summary dashboard. The COVID-19 update below can be found at the King County Public Health Insider Blog.

Based on King County Public Health’s data from Monday, April 25th, our rate of cases now puts King County into the Medium COVID-19 Community Level as defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): over 200 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people over a seven-day period.  

While the CDC “medium” risk category is not a magic threshold, meaning something has suddenly or fundamentally changed about the outbreak, it does tell us that COVID-19 risk is increasing for individuals and for our community. We can use this information to lower our own risk and those around us by increasing our protection.

To limit spread of COVID-19, Public Health recommends using layered prevention measures. These include:

• being up to date on COVID-19 vaccine and recommended booster doses. Vaccination and boosters also help lower the risk of developing long COVID
• improving indoor air quality through ventilation, filtration and other strategies
• using high quality and well-fitting face masks in crowded indoor settings
• getting tested and isolating if you have symptoms and testing when possible before attending gatherings with high-risk people

Our local hospital rate at any given point may differ from CDC’s because our data quality team removes cases among people who are hospitalized for other reasons, but also have COVID. Because of that, our calculation of hospitalization rate is at 5.9 per 100,000, which puts King County in the medium category for community transmission.

We will not be issuing any immediate masking mandate, but we continue to monitor the data very closely. That being said, since the end of April we have been strongly recommending masking in crowded indoor places given the very high level of transmission in our community.