The percentage of the COVID-19 community transmission rate has reached a figure that has county health officials concerned.

In a Zoom meeting on Friday, Grays Harbor County Health Department Director Karolyn Holden expressed concern that the community transmission rate has reached a current high of 37% after the rate of cases caused by community transmission — which includes households — remained steady at 20% until recently.

“That makes me concerned we have disease in the community not being detected,” Holden said, stressing that a key component to reducing the percentage is the ongoing community testing currently taking place. “We need to take advantage of the community testing sites while the Washington National Guard is still here.”

The health department also stated they are working at “getting up to speed” to conduct community testing on its own as of Nov. 21.

The demand for tests at local drive-up testing sites has been high according to Holden.

“We have on-site labs that process up to 80 tests on-site,” Holden said. “We are getting more than 80, so some of them are having to be couriered up to the state lab in Shoreline in order for us to get those tests run because the mobile lab just can’t handle the volume we are getting. So I believe that there is some process in the collection and routing of those specimens that prioritizes the people who are symptomatic or are close contacts to be tested quickly in the on-site lab and other tests for people who aren’t experiencing symptoms are being taken to the state-level health lab.”

Health officials stated 140 individuals were tested in Ocean Shores alone on Thursday and they are seeing “really good turnout in all our sites.” Department officials also said the high demand has not caused a shortage of testing kits and there is no rationing of tests.

Regarding the department’s COVID-19 website information, which has been unavailable recently because of technical problems, department representatives said they are “in the middle” of fixing the issue and will post still images of the respective data and graphs as a temporary solution starting Friday afternoon. As of 2:30 Friday, the most recent numbers on the site were from Wednesday.

The department also stated that the recent rise in the county’s rates per 100,000 population from Aug. 9-Oct. 9 were due to workplace outbreaks and occurred at the same time the state rates were dropping.

Toward the end of the meeting, Holden commented on concerns of further transmission during the upcoming holiday season.

“Really what we would like to see is people not be interacting outside of their regular household,” she said. “Those private gatherings are part of what is driving both community transmission and the cases where we know there has been exposure to a known case. … I would love it if the creative minds out there could support local thoughts about how people can have alternative celebrations that are more safe as a way to support our schools and community as we work our way through this.”