SPOKANE, Wash. — Spokane County will not move to Phase 3 of reopening on Friday amid an increase in coronavirus cases, health officer Dr. Bob Lutz said.
Under guidelines from Washington Gov. Jay Inslee's office, there must be a minimum of three weeks between each phase of reopening. That means Spokane County could have been eligible to move into Phase 3 by Friday, June 12, but Lutz says the county has not met necessary criteria.
“We’re not in a place right now...that I could advise for us to move into Phase 3 safely," Lutz said.
Counties that apply to move into the next phases of reopening are assessed on a handful of targets. They include whether the county has had fewer than 25 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents over a two-week period.
“The ideal is that we have less than 25 [cases] per 100,000, which would put us [Spokane County] around 125 to 130 cases. We’re obviously not there yet," Lutz said on Monday.
Other key metrics from the state revolve around testing, healthcare system readiness, case investigations and contact tracing, and the protection of high-risk populations.
Applications to move forward in the state's reopening plan also need support from the local health officer, the local board of health, local hospitals, and the county commission or council.
Here is what's allowed during Phase 3 of reopening:
- Outdoor recreation with no more than 50 people
- Recreational facilities at 50% capacity (gyms, public pools, etc.)
- Gatherings with no more than 50 people
- Non-essential travel can resume
- Restaurants and Taverns are allowed to operate at 75% capacity with no tables larger than 10
- Bars at restaurants and taverns are allowed to reopen at 25% capacity
- Theaters are allowed to reopen at 50% capacity
- Libraries and museums are allowed to reopen
It is possible that Phase 2 will be the longest in Spokane out of the four phases of reopening, Lutz said on Monday.
“I think Phase 2 is probably the phase that will be the lengthiest because we’ve gone from essentially closed down to open," he added.
The number of coronavirus cases in Spokane County rose by more than 250 in two weeks, according to data from the Spokane Regional Health District. Fifty-nine new cases were reported on Friday alone.
There are 736 total confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Spokane County and 35 deaths as of Monday morning. Fifty-five cases were reported over the weekend.
The increases are primarily related to cluster outbreaks at long-term care facilities or businesses rather than community spread, Lutz said on Monday.
Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward said on Monday health officials are not yet seeing any correlation between the rise in cases and protests against police brutality.
“You have to think that contact tracing would be extremely difficult when you are next to people that you don’t necessarily know and you can’t tell contact tracers who those people might be," Woodward said of the protests.
She added that the majority of people she saw attending protests in downtown Spokane were wearing masks, which she called "encouraging."
Lutz said the protests do "represent a public health issue."
“We recognize that those gatherings are a high-risk situation, especially when people are yelling and things of that sort," he added.
Both Lutz and Woodward say they remain encouraged about the metric of COVID-19 hospitalizations in Spokane County.
“Those metrics [hospitalizations and the death rate] are still very good," Woodward said. "And we knew that when we had more capacity to test and we were going to start contact tracing that we should see cases go up, but they would be for the most part contained.”