Inslee loosens Phase 2 requirements
By Terry Murry on Friday, January 29th, 2021 in Columbia Basin News More Top Stories
OLYMPIA – Gov. Jay Inslee has moved the West Region and the Puget Sound Region into Phase 2 of his pandemic reopening strategy. The rest of the state remains in Phase 1. The change goes into effect Monday.
Inslee did loosen up the requirements for advancing to Phase 2 slightly. Instead of meeting all four of the metrics he established when he first announced the Healthy Washington Roadmap to Recovery plan, a region now only needs to meet three.
The metrics are unchanged. They are the trend in the 14-day rate of new cases; the trend in hospital admissions for new COVID-19 cases over 14 days; the percentage of intensive care unit population over seven days; and the percent of the positivity rate for tests over seven days.
Once a region is placed into Phase 2, it must continue to maintain at least three of those metrics or it will be returned to Phase 1. In Phase 2, restaurants and indoor fitness citizens may have indoor services at 25 percent capacity; sports competitions may resume with limits on the number of spectators; and wedding and funeral ceremonies are able to increase capacities above the present limits.
Further information is at https://www.governor.wa.gov/sites/default/files/HealthyWashington.pdf?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery.
