Regions advancing to Phase 2 of state’s economic reopening plan

||| FROM THE OFFICE OF GOVERNOR JAY INSLEE |||

Gov. Jay Inslee announced changes to the Healthy Washington – Roadmap to Recovery plan on Thursday that will advance two of the state’s eight regions into Phase 2 of the pandemic reopening strategy,

Regions moving to Phase 2 effective Monday are:

• West (Grays Harbor, Pacific, Thurston, Lewis)
• Puget Sound (Snohomish, King, Pierce)

Combined, these counties contain roughly half of the state’s 7.6 million residents.

When a region moves to Phase 2, restaurants may open indoor dining at 25% capacity, as may indoor fitness centers. In Phase 2, sports competitions may resume with limited spectators; and wedding and funeral ceremonies can increase their capacities from current limits.

You can find what phase your region is in and how the local metrics are progressing at the Department of Health website.

Under the new plan, regions will only be required to meet three of the four public health metrics to progress to Phase 2. The original roadmap required regions to meet all four.

The four metrics remain the same. They are:

1. Trend in case rate: Trend in 14-day rate of new COVID-19 cases per 100K population;
2. Trend in hospital admissions rate: Trend in 14-day rate of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100K population;
3. Percent ICU occupancy: Average 7-day percent occupancy of ICU staffed beds; and
4. Percent positivity: 7-day percent positive of COVID-19 tests.

The metrics provide an overview of current COVID-19 trends and health care system readiness in each region, ensuring that health care systems will efficiently and equitably respond to potential future outbreaks.

The requirement to maintain three metrics to remain in Phase 2 remains unchanged. If any region fails to meet any two metrics, they will still regress to Phase 1.

Read more about the changes on the governor’s Medium page.

Read the full Healthy Washington — Roadmap to Recovery plan here.