By: Pepper Fisher

PORT ANGELES – At Friday morning’s Covid-19 briefing we learned that over 400 people so far are currently in quarantine, at home or elsewhere, largely due to contact tracing following a large spike in cases in the Port Angeles area.

Those new infections were primarily traced to parties and at least one downtown bar that has since closed indefinitely.

Health Officer Dr. Allison Berry Unthank says most, but not all, businesses, particularly in the restaurant and bar industry, are working hard to operate within the recommended safety guidelines, and she applauds them for that. As for the business owners who are not following the rules, she had this to say:

“We do occasionally have instances where businesses are not interested in working with us. And when that happens, we do have legal avenues that we can go down to make sure that they do comply with covid-19 safety guidelines. And we are more than happy to do that. I think there has been some confusion about that. But if we have a business owner who is unwilling to partner with us, we are perfectly willing to utilize any legal avenue available. I will make sure that they do follow covid-19 safety guidelines and we are doing that currently.”

A total of 180 cases have been confirmed in our county and the important metric of cases per 100k population in a two-week period is now at 97, putting us in the high-risk zone. That number was at 75 a week ago. 32 new cases have been added since that time.