Steps to combat COVID-19 will be phased out, Inslee says

Gov. Jay Inslee on Wednesday offered a framework of how and why Washington will roll back the measures he’s taken to combat the new coronavirus pandemic.

Inslee did not offer a timetable because he said that’s “unknowable” now, but he said the state will make a transition from the social distancing strategy to “targeted efforts to diagnose and recognize and protect and isolate individuals who have this disease and might transmit this disease.”

The governor added: “This transition will not be a light switch on and off. It will be a dial and we will dial it up and down as the data suggests and as our community responds. And it will be a phased approach.”

The transition would be made when two things exist together, Inslee said

“First, our social distancing has to be successful enough that we drive down the number of infected people where we can be confident we’re not going to have the curve start to rebound and go up again.

“The second stage is the individualized effort, where we test people rapidly, where we isolate them rapidly, where we treat them rapidly,” the governor said.

Inslee said mitigation efforts could be phased out in the opposite order of when they were put into effect.

That would mean the the partial business closures could come first, followed by the stay-at-home order, and then the prohibition on larger gatherings. Right now, all of them run through May 4.

“The pace of that will depend largely on how the data responds to what we’re doing. I was talking to a leader at Starbucks the other day ... and they have an approach of monitor and adapt. I think that’s a good way to look at this,” he said.

At the press briefing, Inslee displayed and discussed four charts — the first two from the University of Washington Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation.

The first showed that projected COVID-19 deaths per day would decline to zero in early May if social distancing continues. The second showed that if Washington stops social distancing on April 22, the number of deaths would begin to increase again.

The third and fourth charts were from the Bellevue-based Institute for Disease Modeling.

The third showed that for every person who’s been infected in Pierce, King and Snohomish counties, the number of other people they’ve infected has declined from 3 to 1.

The fourth illustrates that the infection rate has leveled off, but it’s projected to “plateau” instead of decrease.

“We’re not at a level where we can take off social distancing nor are we extremely close to a level where we can take off social distancing,” Inslee said.

Public and private schools are closed for the rest of this school year. The state is hopeful that schools can re-open in the fall.

This story was originally published April 15, 2020 at 5:38 PM.