Officials Move to Downsize Triage Center at Wenatchee Valley College

Confluence Health and Chelan Douglas Health District are planning to downsize the COVID-19 triage site in response to two county area turning a corner with the Omicron variant. The triage site was stood up at Wenatchee Valley College in January by community partners.

"We still have pretty high rates locally, but we are starting to see a decrease in demand for testing, number of people out in critical infrastructure components," said Luke Davies, Chelan Douglas Health District administrator. "As we've seen with Omicron in other states and on the west side, we can forecast we're going to be decreasing our rates pretty dramatically over the next two weeks."

The positive shift in testing demand and staffing shortages is coupled with a drop in frequency at Confluence Health's emergency department. According to Davies, in the midst of Omicron's peak, the ER had about 30 to 40 patients a day and that's decreased to ten patients per day.

"The main reason for the triage center was to create an off pressure of their emergency department," said Davies. "But we still have an incredible amount of stress on our [healthcare] system as a lot of deferred care coming down the pipeline for healthcare providers."