No rollback: Inslee puts two-week pause on phase changes for counties

OLYMPIA — Grant County will not move down to Phase 2 of Gov. Jay Inslee’s COVID-19 recovery plan this week. Inslee announced a two-week pause Tuesday on the state’s phase change plans to evaluate the progress of the pandemic.

“All counties will stay in their current phase,” Inslee said during an online press conference Tuesday morning.

All Washington counties are in Phase 3 except for Cowlitz, Pierce, Whitman and Ferry counties. Inslee said public health officials in Ferry County voluntarily moved the county back to Phase 2 after a super-spreader event caused nearly 1% of the county’s 7,500 residents to fall ill with COVID-19 during the past two weeks.

The pause will allow restaurants and public accommodations in counties in Phase 3 to remain at 50% of capacity, rather than the 25% for Phase 2 under the state’s Roadmap to Recovery plan.

“I think that was a wise decision and a good call,” said Matt Moore, one of the owners of Moore Furniture in Ephrata and a member of the Ephrata City Council.

Moore said the metrics used to evaluate which phase a county is in — fewer than 200 cases per 100,000 residents for the prior 14 days and fewer than five hospitalizations for the prior seven days in counties with 50,000 residents or more — seemed arbitrary to him.

“You have to have markers, but these seemed like a guess,” Moore said.

Inslee said the decision to pause was made after data collected during the weekend showed the number of COVID-19 cases statewide appeared to be leveling off and possibly even showing signs of decline. The governor said the state’s response to the pandemic is driven by the data obtained and analyzed by public health officials, and that allows the state’s approach to pandemic closures to evolve as well.

“As the pandemic has changed, so have we,” Inslee said. “Flexibility is a virtue.”

Dale Kemper, the manager of Evolve Fitness in Moses Lake, said he was relieved nothing has to change right now and the gym can continue to operate at 50% of capacity and have on-site classes.

“I was pretty nervous about that,” Kemper said.

Kemper said the gym’s members have been good about adhering to state protocols, including wiping down equipment and not coming in if they feel sick, and that even with the reduced capacity, Evolve has never had to ask anyone to leave.

“The members have worked around that,” he said. “Kudos to them.”

Kemper said he hopes the next thing Evolve can do is reopen its day care, something it has not yet received any guidance on from the state.

“I do not know what phase our day care will reopen in,” he said.

Inslee said some kind of restrictions will probably be in place statewide until “sometime in summer” when enough people will be vaccinated or have had the disease that “more normal activities” can resume across the state.

For that to happen, the governor said he has heard figures of 75% to 80% of state residents needing to be vaccinated. But state health officials have not yet determined just how many Washingtonians would need to be vaccinated for that to be possible.

“We don’t know what that number is at the moment,” he said.

Inslee said every Washington resident has a role in combating the pandemic by getting vaccinated. Since April 15, every Washingtonian 16 or older has been eligible to receive a vaccination against COVID-19. According to the Associated Press, 54% of state residents have received at least one dose and 39% of the state’s 7.6 million residents are fully vaccinated.

Case rates in Grant County were reported at 269.6, while case rates in Adams County were at 195.6 during the prior two weeks.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic in early 2020, in Washington state there have been more than 377,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases, 30,000 probable cases and 5,507 related deaths, according to the Associated Press.