Washington state virus deaths will decrease: Report

Washington state, which had the first known coronavirus case in the United States, appears to be flattening its "curve" — the impact on the state's hospital system at any one time.

The Seattle Times reported Monday that the latest models from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IMHE) suggest the state will hit "peak resource use" on April 2 and project daily COVID-19 deaths will peak Monday, before dropping to 18 deaths per day during April 7-9 and declining slowly from there.

Fifteen more people died from coronavirus in Washington on Saturday, and the total number of confirmed cases in the state was 7,591 and there are 310 deaths, according to new numbers from the state health department.

King County officials said 2,898 people have tested positive for coronavirus in the county, an increase of 111 from Friday. Two hundred people from King County with COVID-19 have died, representing nearly 7 percent of all positive cases.

Governor Jay Inslee announced Sunday that the state will return more than 400 of the 500 ventilators it recently received from the federal government, so they can go to New York and other states harder hit by the coronavirus crisis.

Officials said the ventilators are not powerful enough to treat coronavirus patients, but they can be used for other patients to free up stronger ventilators.

"The state of Washington has done very well. They won't be needing some of the ventilators that have been sent. We thank Governor Inslee for giving them back. He feels confident they are in good shape," President Donald Trump said Sunday. ``The state of Washington has done very well - they won't be needing some of the ventilators that have been sent."

Vice-President Mike Pence also thanked Washington and Oregon for sending ventilators to other states and said they were ``leading by example'' in taking steps to slow the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and helping states that needed them the most.

On Jan 21, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Washington state's health department announced the first case of 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in the US.

Life Care Center of Kirkland, a suburb east of Seattle, last month was an epicenter for coronavirus outbreaks in the US.

King County, where Seattle is the county seat, confirmed at least 37 people associated with the nursing home have died from COVID-19 related complications.

A March 18 report from the CDC found 129 cases of COVID-19 were associated with Life Care Center. This included at the time 81 residents, 34 staffers and 14 visitors.

The nursing home is facing more than $600,000 in fines and the possibility of losing federal funding after officials documented a series of flaws in the facility's handling of the outbreak., the Washington Post reported.

The federal government set a September deadline for the Life Care Center to comply with federal regulations.

Last week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sent a letter to the center saying that during inspections of the facility last month, officials "found the most serious deficiencies to be widespread and constituting in Immediate Jeopardy to resident health or safety", the Post reported.

The facility no longer met the requirements to participate in the Medicare program, according to CMS, which is also assessing per-day fines of $13,585. Those penalties, effective from Feb. 12 through March 27, resulted in a total of $611,325.

Life Care Center said in a statement last week that it worked with CMS to "remove three Immediate Jeopardy citations''.

"The federal administrative process provides a means for us to dispute any findings which we believe are incorrect, and we believe some are here. However, we will follow CMS's process and not address our responses in the public," the statement said.