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A wedding in Washington state last month that welcomed more than 300 people could now be linked to deadly coronavirus outbreaks at two long-term care facilities, officials said on Friday.
The wedding on November 7 at a nearby private location Ritzville, Washington, first attracted attention when nearly 40 participants from neighboring Grant County had tested positive for COVID-19 within 10 days of the event.
Washington State Health Guidelines at the time, wedding ceremonies were limited to 30 people.
The Grant County Health District now says staff at two long-term care facilities who attended the wedding, which has been labeled by authorities as a “super-spreading” event, have contracted the virus.
According to ABC News, health officials said staff members were working while contagious, before they knew they carried the infection.
It was unclear on Friday how many cases could be attributed to these employees and the event.
“They look after all the residents, so we won’t know which cases are staff-related,” Grant County Health District Administrator Theresa Adkinson told ABC in an email.
ABC noted that there had been 54 deaths from COVID-19 in the county, including 29 associated with long-term care facilities.
Adkinson added that the department plans to do “more in-depth analysis of the data” once the recent outbreak of infection is better contained.
The health department did not say how many staff at the facility had tested positive.
In a press release from Thursday Announcing the deaths in healthcare facilities, the county health department urged residents to stay “at home as much as possible” to protect populations at high risk from the virus.
“The most vulnerable members of our community – the elderly, the immunocompromised and those with chronic illnesses – are particularly at risk of complications from COVID-19 infection and we must continue to take steps to protect them from this. disease, ”the statement read.
“Your choice to reunite with people outside your household could result in additional cases of COVID-19 and even death,” the statement continued. “Please protect your loved ones by staying at home.”
Weddings in other states have also been identified as “super-spreader” events for COVID-19. In August, a wedding in the Maine countryside was linked to 177 coronavirus cases and seven deaths, including six in a long-term care facility, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
From Thursday, the Washington State Department of Health has recorded more than 174,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with 2,925 deaths from the virus.
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