Inslee says ‘return to public life will occur in measured steps’

Gov. Jay Inslee on Tuesday evening outlined a roadmap for a “safe return to public life” from the new coronavirus pandemic, but he did not say when the stay-at-home order and partial business closures will end.

As part of his strategy to slow the spread of the disease which has killed 682 Washington residents, Inslee last month ordered all “non-essential businesses” to shut down and for residents to stay home, unless they are deemed “essential” workers. The governor has extended the order through May 4.

“We’re going to take steps and then monitor to see whether they work or if we must continue to adapt. We will not be able to lift many of those restrictions by May 4. And we will let you know when we can lift restrictions as soon as we know,” he said in a speech televised and streamed around the state.

Inslee said the state believes it can soon allow some elective surgeries to resume, provided health professionals have appropriate personal protective equipment.

“We also hope we can begin to let people take part in outdoor recreation that is so much a part of our Northwest identity, as well as our physical and mental health,” the governor said.

A work group with members from business and labor presented Inslee last Wednesday with a plan to restart existing construction projects that can be performed meeting social distancing requirements. Higher-risk construction would resume later, in phases.

“We hope to implement it very soon,” the governor said.

After the speech, Inslee Chief of Staff David Postman said the three restrictions possibly could be lifted before May 4. He also said discussions in the governor’s office about outdoor recreation included fishing and hunting.

Inslee warned against moving too quickly to lift all of the measures put into place to provide social distancing, which is for people to stay at least six feet apart from others.

“The data tell us that if we were to lift all restrictions right now – or even two weeks from now – this decline will almost certainly stop and the spread of COVID-19 will go up. Our gains in this fight have been hard-won thanks to the sacrifices of countless Washingtonians; to turn back on this successful temporary approach now would be disastrous,” Inslee said.

Postman said the computer modeling that the governor’s office studies about the outbreak is “predicated on restrictions being left in place through the end of May in some cases. It certainly is our understanding, listening to the public health experts, that some of those restrictions will be required on a longer basis.”

At a press briefing Tuesday, Dr. Kathy Lofy, the state health officer and chief science officer, said her interpretation of data sources is that COVID-19 activity peaked in Washington in late March.

“It’s been trending down since the first half of April, which is good news for our state. However, as of mid-April, we were still identifying about 200 people with COVID-19 per day, which is higher than we would like to be,” she said.

Last Thursday, the Trump administration issued nonbinding guidelines that call for a “downward trajectory of documented cases within a 14-day period” before initiating a phased reopening.

Postman said the 14-day mark is not the state’s meaningful measure.

“It, of course, depends on how big the decline is, how consistent, and how widespread it is around the state...” he said in an email.

Inslee said the state’s recovery must be guided by science, not politics.

“It does not differ greatly from the recovery plans of other Western states. It does not differ greatly from the principles of the White House’s national recovery outline either,” he said.

The governor said the beginning of the state’s recovery will have “widely available testing for individuals who may have COVID-19, tracing with whom they have had contact, and having individuals isolate or quarantine if they could be transmitters of the virus.”

Also on Tuesday, Inslee asked Vice President Mike Pence for federal assistance to develop a robust national testing system to “enable a safe return to public life amid COVID-19.”

“On April 20, your Administration provided governors with a list of in-state laboratories in an attempt to illustrate states’ apparent existing capacity. But this does nothing to answer the repeated calls from governors to address the lack of swabs, viral transport media, reagents, and other supplies and personnel needed to take advantage of that lab capacity.

“Just as a driver cannot travel their full distance on a quarter-tank of gas, we cannot unlock the full capacity of our labs without additional testing supplies and infrastructure from the federal government,” Inslee told Pence.

In his speech, Inslee said: “A variety of barriers have kept us from taking more than about 4,000 tests per day. We need to be processing between 20,000 and 30,000 tests a day for our contact-tracing plan to work.”

By the second week of May, about 1,500 state and local health workers, along with volunteers, will focus solely on contact tracing, Inslee said.

In response to a question at a press briefing, Lofy, the state health officer and chief science officer, said: “I think the one unknown is if we start to see increased activity and our case counts go up, we may not have enough individuals.”

This story was originally published April 21, 2020 at 5:15 PM.