Over 7,000 people have died from COVID in Washington state

SEATTLE — Over 7,000 people have died from COVID-19 in Washington state, according to data from the state Department of Health.

Washington eclipsed previous milestones of 6,000 deaths on July 12 and 5,000 deaths on March 3 this year. The country’s first reported COVID-19 death, which took place in King County, was announced March 1, 2020.

The DOH on Tuesday reported 2,820 new coronavirus cases and 56 new deaths from COVID-19.

The update brings the state’s totals to 609,911 cases and 7,037 deaths, meaning that 1.2 percent of people diagnosed in Washington have died, according to the DOH. The data is as of 11:59 p.m. Monday. Tallies may be higher earlier in the week because new state data isn’t reported on Sundays and COVID-related deaths aren’t reported on the weekends.

In addition, 34,255 people have been hospitalized in the state due to the virus — 201 new hospitalizations. In King County, the state’s most populous, state health officials have confirmed a total of 143,546 coronavirus diagnoses and 1,808 COVID-19 deaths.

Since vaccinations began in mid-December, the state and health care providers have administered 8,774,782 doses and 56.1 percent of all Washingtonians have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to vaccination data, which the state updates on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Providers are currently giving an average of about 13,382 vaccine shots per day.

The DOH says its daily case reports may also include duplicate test results, results assigned to the wrong county, results that are reported for today but are actually from a previous day, occasional false positive tests and other data discrepancies. Because of this, the previous day’s total number of cases plus the number of new daily cases does not add up to the new day’s total number of cases. State health officials recommend reviewing the DOH dashboard’s epidemiologic curves tab for the most accurate representation of the state’s COVID-19 spread.