Health officials ‘have not had discussions’ about rolling whole state back to Phase 2
Apr 29, 2021, 5:17 AM
Health officials are scheduled to announce which Washington counties will be moving back to Phase 2 of reopening by next Tuesday, May 4. But with case rates and hospitalizations continuing to rise in several regions, have leaders considered a statewide rollback?
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According to Secretary of Health Dr. Umair Shah, that’s not currently on the table.
“We have not had discussions in terms of moving the entire state back,” he said during a Wednesday briefing. “It’s really looking at this from a county to county perspective — there’s a significant variation across the counties. The concern is that we are seeing increasing transmission in communities across Washington, but not everywhere.”
In order to remain in Phase 3, large counties need to have 200 or fewer new cases per 100,000 residents over two weeks and five or fewer hospitalizations per 100,000 residents over the past week. Counties with a population under 50,000 need to have 100 or fewer total new cases tallied over two weeks and 3 or fewer hospitalizations over the past week.
Combined, Washington state is exceeding both those metrics, sitting at 245.5 cases per 100,000 and 5.6 hospitalizations as of April 27. Despite that, numbers differ significantly between many individual counties, ranging from the zero cases Garfield County has reported over its last two-week tracking period, to the 365.3 new cases per 100,000 Pierce County is currently sitting at.
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“The state is not just one unit,” state Health Officer Dr. Scott Lindquist noted Wednesday. “There is so much variability across the state; we’re trying to respect that.”
A Deputy Secretary of Health Lacy Fehrenbach pointed out, the decision not to roll the entire state back is also based on a being able to maintain at least some forward momentum in Washington as vaccinations ramp up.
“This is why we’re not moving the whole state back — to keep our state moving forward on a pathway to recovery,” she described. “We’re dialing up or down the activity based on disease level while we are rapidly vaccinating Washingtonians, so that hopefully we are all going forward as we move later into May and June.”
