A Jefferson County resident has died from COVID-19, Jefferson County Public Health Officer Dr. Allison Berry said Monday.

The death increased the total number of those who have died from COVID in Jefferson County to 35.

Berry said the most recent death involved a person in their 60s.

“They had multiple underlying chronic conditions and were unfortunately not up to date on their vaccines,” Berry told county commissioners during their coronavirus briefing Monday.

A total of 164 Clallam County residents have died from COVID-19. The most recent deaths to the virus in Clallam have included a man in his 80s who had multiple underlying chronic conditions and was affected as part of a long-term care facility outbreak. The patient was up to date on his vaccines, Berry said, “but because of the sheer volume of his  underlying conditions, was not able to overcome his infection.”

A Clallam resident in his 40s also passed recently due to COVID-19, she said. That patient was not up to date on his vaccines, and passed from a stroke after getting COVID-19.

The death toll for COVID-19 has risen since February, Berry said.

“Nationally and at the state level we’re seeing cases and hospitalizations continuing to downtrend,” Berry said.

“Unfortunately, deaths remain a stubbornly high figure,” she added. “At this point, we’re seeing over 500 deaths per day due to COVID-19 at the national level. That is actually higher than we were reporting last month.”

Berry noted there had been a delay in some death reporting at the national level but an adjustment has set estimates at a consistent level of 500 deaths per day.

“At this point, we’ve lost over 25,000 Americans to COVID-19 at the national level just in 2023 alone,” she added.

Death data reported for COVID-19 for 2021 has marked the virus as the third leading cause of death in the United States.

It is the fourth leading cause of death in Washington state, Berry said, and was the sixth leading cause of death in Jefferson County in 2021.

“That is half of what we were seeing in the nation as a whole,” Berry said of the Jefferson County figures. “But even here, it was still a major driver of death in our community.”

Jefferson County health officials have diagnosed 44 new cases of COVID-19 in the last week.

One person remains hospitalized for COVID-19 in Jefferson County, Berry said.

Jefferson County has had a total of 7,009 reported cases of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, health officials reported Friday. A total of 180 residents in the county have been hospitalized due to COVID infections.

According to Jefferson County Public Health, 28 of the residents who have died from COVID-19 have been 65 or older. Seven of those deaths involved people who had not been vaccinated.

A total of 11 people who have died from COVID-19 in Jefferson County were not vaccinated, while 18 of those who have passed away from the coronavirus were not up to date on their vaccinations. Four residents who were fully vaccinated against COVID-19 have died since the start of the pandemic.