Vashon’s summer COVID surge continues, with 18 new cases total reported locally since early July.

Twelve of those cases have occurred in the past 15 days, bringing the total number of recorded cases on the island, since the beginning of the pandemic, to 143 as of Aug. 12.

The current spike stands in marked contrast to the situation in June when only one case was reported on the island.

According to Dr. Jim Bristow, leader of Vashon’s Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) COVID Task Force, nearly half of the 18 new cases have occurred in fully-vaccinated people, and roughly one-fifth were in children ages 11 and younger, who are not yet eligible for vaccination.

All the recent cases in vaccinated individuals have been relatively mild, Bristow said, but unvaccinated people remain at significant risk. In this way, kids are much more likely to display symptoms than before.

According to Bristow, the surge can be attributed to the arrival of the Delta variant, which studies have confirmed is much more infectious than the previous COVID strains. Infected people, whether vaccinated or not, carry higher viral loads and appear to have 100 to 1000 times more of the virus in their noses, Bristow said.

“[The variant] also reduces the length of time that is required to catch COVID if you’re around someone who is infectious,” said Bristow. “We don’t know by how much.”

The rise in cases among vaccinated people, Bristow emphatically said, does not represent vaccine failure, as vaccinated individuals are still well protected against death or hospitalization from severe disease — something that has proven true on Vashon, where no one has been hospitalized for the virus since January.

Also, he said it stood to reason that with Vashon’s high vaccination rate, the island would begin to see a number of so-called “breakthrough cases” in its population.

Currently, 83% of islanders 12 and older are fully vaccinated against the virus, and 93% have received one dose of the vaccine.

“The vaccine trials showed that 10% of vaccinated folks are still susceptible to mild or asymptomatic disease, but it is likely this number may be higher with the Delta variant,” he said.

Bristow pointed to several measures that islanders can now take to slow the spread of variant and better protect themselves as well as immunocompromised people, young children and other unvaccinated people on Vashon from suffering the most severe outcomes of the disease. This group of islanders, he said, numbers more than 2,000 people.

Along with the rest of the MRC’s COVID Task Force, Bristow recommends that everyone who is eligible should be immediately vaccinated. Those who don’t get the shots are not protected from severe COVID.

Other precautions include:

• Avoid non-essential travel. Most Vashon cases still originate from travel outside of the area.
• Everyone, both vaccinated and unvaccinated, needs to wear a mask when indoors in public spaces.
• Those who develop even mild respiratory or gastrointestinal symptoms should get tested. Rapid antigen tests are great for this and it is worth having one at home for when you get that cold that might just be COVID.
• CDC and King County guidelines for vaccinated individuals now recommend that vaccinated individuals exposed to COVID should quarantine and be tested.
• If you have been exposed to a person with COVID or if you have tested positive for COVID, call Vashon’s MRC at 844-469-4554 for advice regarding quarantine and testing.

Bristow pointed to the results of Vashon’s high vaccination rate, saying that higher hospitalization and death rates in certain areas of King County and around the country were directly linked to higher percentages of unvaccinated populations.

“Vashon can still pat itself on the back, though,” he said. “While there is still a fair amount of uncertainty around Delta, it’s safer to be on Vashon than most other places.”

In other news regarding COVID prevention, Vashon Island School District last week sent an email to island students and families setting expectations as it plans to return to five-day-a-week, in-person school, in September.

Following guidance from Public Health – Seattle King County, Superintendent Slade McSheehy announced that masks will be required for all teachers and students indoors, regardless if activities are student-related or non-student related.

Masking indoors will be required at VISD Board meetings and for all outside groups who are using indoor school facilities.

“We hope to see transmission rates drop as vaccination rates rise which will hopefully result in lowering the restrictions we have become accustomed to during the recent summer weeks,” McSheehy said.

The superintendent also announced that the district had recently met with members of the Medical Reserve Corps and VashonBePrepared to discuss testing of students and other health measures for the upcoming school year. Symptomatic testing will be available for any student or family member who reports symptoms, he said, and surveillance testing options are currently being explored with the state’s “Return to Learn” program.

More information will follow as plans are developed, McSheehy said.

On Monday, the Pentagon also announced that it would mandate vaccines for the country’s 1.3 million active-duty military troops no later than the middle of September, and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee issued a sweeping order also mandating vaccinations for most state employees as well as health care workers. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkin and King County Executive Dow Constantine announced similar mandates for city and county employees.

On Thursday, Aug. 12, Chris Reykdal, Washington Superintendent of Public Instruction, requested Gov. Jay Inslee to issue a state mandate for all K-12 public school employees in the state to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Reykdal cited the rise of the Delta variant in his request, saying that without a vaccination mandate, he worried that students exposed to the virus would be subject to long quarantines and that schools might even have to close if the virus spread widely. In-person learning, he said, was crucial to the success of students this year.

“Especially after a year and a half of remote and hybrid learning, a continuity of in-person instruction will be more important this year than ever,” Reykdal wrote.