Starting next Monday, Feb. 1, Snohomish County will be moving into Phase 2 of the state’s Healthy Washington — Roadmap to Recovery plan, with more options for indoor dining, theaters, and indoor sports and fitness.
Gov. Jay Insless announced Monday that the recovery plan he unveiled Jan. 6 will be changed in two ways: First, the evaluation criteria for the state’s eight regions to move from Phase 1 to Phase 2, and the timeframe in which regions can progress.
“We are getting closer to finding our way out of this mess, but we aren’t there yet,” Inslee said during a press conference Thursday. “We have sacrificed too much to let our frustrations get the best of us now when the finish line is in sight, however distant that may seem in our field of vision.”
The changes come after further conversations with public health partners and the state’s increasing vaccination rates.
Phase 2
In accordance with the roadmap, several regions will be eligible to enter Phase 2 beginning Monday. The progression is contingent on whether their metrics continue their positive trends.
Regions moving to Phase 2 effective Monday are:
- Puget Sound (Snohomish, King, Pierce)
- West (Grays Harbor, Pacific, Thurston, Lewis)
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:
- Trend in case rate: Trend in 14-day rate of new COVID-19 cases per 100K population;
- Trend in hospital admissions rate: Trend in 14-day rate of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100K population;
- Percent ICU occupancy: Average seven-day percent occupancy of ICU staffed beds; and
- Percent positivity: Seven-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.
The governor also announced that the Department of Health’s timeline for region’s evaluation will change. Beginning next week, regions metrics will be evaluated every two weeks instead of every week.
edmons is looking like tent city, kinda resembles parts of seattle.
Moving in the right direction! This is great! Keep up the good work everyone
Although glad to hear this, one has to wonder, especially with new and stronger variants being unearthed, is this the right move? Reminds me of many moons ago, back in high school, when not enough passed an exam, the teacher lowered the curve. Who does that benefit? More importantly, who will it hurt?
No it is not the right move. Exceptions…changes from safest rules to GET money….
These restaurants should never have been opened even for outside…dining. Open for pick up only. Take it home and grab a bottle on the way.
The wants rather than essential needs is the problem. Its obvious.
People these variants in covid are a very serious matter. This opening of schools will cause much illness and death.
Deal with it. Work remotely. Educate remotely. And please stop with your lets go help everone in groups…not distancing, I see them..STAY HOME.
No more anything for anyone…unless the health districts and food banks can’t do it. And they can. Your insane desire to be out all the time under the guise of helping…is hurting.
Many more will get sick. More will die and we will never get out if stage 1 again. Thats what. All for the love of money. Very selfish and very shallow. If Inslee had to run again he would not be behaving in this cavalier way. I promise you that.
Election is over, Trump is gone, the natives are getting restless and Inslee is in his last term. So, now he is allowing those counties that voted him back into office to reopen while punishing those who voted for the other guy a bit longer. Next question: where is phase 3 and beyond ? Or is “Build Back Better” here to stay forcing some dystopian, so called new normal on us all to make sure we behave ? IMHO, this will last until everyone ( or most everyone ) decides to throw away their woke ” obey” mask(s) and start living again.
I’m reading that countries who used HCQ had 79% less CV-19 mortality.
https://c19study.com/
If this is true, we didnt need masks, shutdowns, social distancing, or a vaccine. We just needed good therapeutics (chicken noodle soup). Trump touted HCQ. The safe, available drug got blocked. Big pharma got paid. Hundreds of thousands more died.
I’m also reading NYC undercounted their nursing home deaths by 50%. Trump sent the hospital ships and they went unused. Andrew Cuomo hid the numbers.
No it isn’t true Matt. The beginning I didn’t bother with the rest.
I’ve read debunk articles of non-scientist debunking the 79% HCQ study and you’re probably getting led there by the google ministry of truth. They cite that Spain wasn’t accurately accounted for among other things. That might move things a point or two. There are now several studies pointing out that countries who have ubiquitous HCQ usage have way fewer deaths.
It’s also undeniable (even China doesn’t deny it now) that the virus came from a lab in China. The same pseudo science journals put out fake studies saying “no evidence virus engineered”, “no evidence came from a lab”. The official lies are unbelievable at this point.
Yeah, this wasn’t political at all. The PPE wasn’t political, then the travel bans weren’t political, then the lockdowns weren’t political, then the vaccine wasn’t political, now the unscientific reopening isn’t political. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.