Kitsap Sees Decline in COVID-19 Cases but Is Still at Unsafe Level

More than 5,000 people have tested positive in Kitsap for the coronavirus. The total on Bainbridge is 244. Although those numbers may seem high, we are seeing a drop in the number of weekly new Kitsap cases, down from a high of 397 cases the week ending January 9 to 144 the last week of January.Despite the decline, Kitsap Health Officer Dr. Gib Morrow warned in a presentation to the Kitsap Public Health Board on February 2, "We are still nowhere near a safe level.”Kitsap officials and volunteers are working hard to get citizens vaccinated. By the last week of January, more than 3,000 Kitsap residents were fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Almost 20,000 people had received the first vaccine of two. But Kitsap is not getting as much vaccine as requested, and the percentage of people vaccinated is still low: 10 percent of Kitsap residents have received one dose, and 2.1 percent have received two doses. The Kitsap Public Health District and Kitsap County EOC Community Vaccination Site at St. Michael Medical Center in Bremerton administered 100 percent of available doses within one week and currently has no first doses.The Washington State Department of Health announced that demand is far greater than supply in the state. This week DOH reported that, "more than 600 facilities requested more than 358,000 first doses of vaccine. Our first-dose allocation from the federal government was only 107,125 doses, which is less than one-third of what providers asked for."Read here to find out more about vaccine availability.