page_title: COVID-19 pandemic in Washington (state)
section_title: February: first deaths
hierarchical_section_title: COVID-19 pandemic in Washington (state) / Timeline / February: first deaths
caption_attribution_description: English: Life Care Center of Kirkland, a healthcare facility in the Juanita neighborhood of Kirkland, Washington, during the 2020 COVID-19 virus outbreak
context_page_description: The first confirmed case relating to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States was announced by the state of Washington on January 21, 2020. Washington made the first announcement of a death from the disease in the U.S. on February 29 and later announced that two deaths there on February 26 were also due to COVID-19. Until mid-March, Washington had the highest absolute number of confirmed cases and the highest number per capita of any state in the country, until it was surpassed by New York state. Many of the deceased were residents of a nursing home in Kirkland, an Eastside suburb of Seattle in King County.
  Washington had 73,879 confirmed cases and a total of 1,905 confirmed deaths as of August 29, 2020. Public health experts agree that the true number of cases in the state is much greater than the number that have been confirmed by laboratory tests. It is very difficult to know the true number since most people experience only mild illness and testing is not widely available.
  Governor Jay Inslee issued a statewide stay-at-home order on March 23 to last at least two weeks.
context_section_description: On February 19, 2020, a resident of a Life Care Centers of America nursing home in Kirkland, an Eastside King County suburb of Seattle, was transferred to a local hospital and later tested positive for COVID-19. On February 24, a 54-year-old man was transferred from the Life Care Center of Kirkland to Harborview Medical Center and died there on February 26. Also on the 26th, a woman in her 80s from the center died at her family home. Both were found to have had COVID-19 and in one case this was discovered in post-mortem testing. The two deaths were announced on March 3.
  On February 28, a high school student at Henry M. Jackson High School in Mill Creek, Washington was confirmed as having the virus causing the school to be closed immediately; Mariner High School in Everett was also closed because a student's parent had the virus. The following day, researchers confirmed the coronavirus strain in the student's case may be related to the coronavirus strain in the first confirmed U.S. case from January 19, suggesting that the virus may have been spreading in the area for up to six weeks. Also on February 28, a woman in her 50s who had recently returned from South Korea and who was an employee of the United States Postal Service at its Network Distribution Center facility in Federal Way, King County, tested positive.
  On February 29, Washington health officials made the first announcement of a death from COVID-19 in the United States (it was later discovered that a COVID-19 death occurred in California at least as early as February 6). A man in his late 50s with pre-existing chronic illness died at EvergreenHealth's hospital in Kirkland. He was not associated with the Life Care Center and although patients from the center were also in the hospital, it was not believed that any patients contracted the virus at the hospital. Officials said there was no evidence he contracted the virus through travel and they suspected community spread of the disease in King County. The man had not been tested for the virus until February 28, partly because the lab in Washington was not ready to conduct tests, and partly because until late February the CDC had been recommending testing only for those with COVID-19 symptoms who had recently traveled to China. Public health officials also reported two confirmed cases in the Life Care Center nursing home, including a woman in her 40s who was a health care worker at the facility.
caption: Life Care Center of Kirkland in 2020
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