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Whatcom County has definitely begun to see its fourth COVID-19 surge of the pandemic, a local doctor says, but this surge is looking quite different than the three previous peaks.

“Unlike the other surges, when we saw a significant increase in cases in the community followed by a significant increase in the hospitalizations, if you look at the Whatcom numbers, Whatcom is seeing a slight increase in its (case) numbers — not like the third wave,” Dr. Sudhakar Karlapudi, chief medical officer at St. Joseph hospital in Bellingham, told The Bellingham Herald last week. “But the wave of hospitalizations is way high. The peak is way too high for hospitalizations.”