‘Not ready for Phase 3, and Phase 2 is in danger,’ Pierce County health director warns
The head of the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department on Wednesday offered some tough advice for residents.
Tighten up your COVID-19 prevention or risk losing Phase 2 status in the state’s Safe Start plan.
In a blog post published Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Chen noted the county’s climbing case totals, which hit a peak Wednesday with 45 new cases.
That’s the most since June 19, when the county registered 33 new cases.
In the post, titled, “Our grip on Phase 2 is slipping,” Chen said there is no single cause for the latest spike.
“Well, Pierce County, it is all of us,” he wrote. “All. Of. Us.”
Chen added: “When we applied for Phase 2 two-and-a-half weeks ago, our total cases over two weeks was 16 per 100,000 residents. As of today’s case count, that has increased to 31.5 per 100,000.”
Average cases per day over the past 14 days is 20.3, according to the health department.
“COVID-19 continues to be widespread in Pierce County,” Chen wrote. “It affects every geographic area of our community, all age groups and all ethnic groups. In the last few weeks, we have seen more cases among those 40 and under. We have seen cases among businesses. Traffic and cellphone mobility are up. This tells us people are going out and about, getting exposed and exposing others.”
All of this puts Phase 3 out of Pierce County’s reach for now. Thurston County was allowed to move to Phase 3 on Wednesday.
“Right now, we are not in a position to apply for Phase 3,” Chen wrote. “We expected some increase in disease when we entered Phase 2. We are worried it has increased and is not leveling off. We strongly urge everyone to stay the course with precautions. The governor has not ordered a county to move backwards, but we do not want to become the first.”
The warnings didn’t come as a surprise to some local officials, including Derek Young, a Pierce County Council member and vice president of the TPCHD Board of Health.
“We took the eye off the ball when we relaxed standards, and we have been out and spreading the disease,” he said. “ This is an alarming jump.”
Young said it’s unlikely that Pierce County will move to another phase unless things improve.
Marty Campbell, Pierce County Council member and member of the Board of Health, said the numbers are sobering.
Campbell introduced legislation at the county level this week to encourage residents to wear masks before Gov. Jay Inslee mandated mask-wearing in public.
On Tuesday, Inslee mandated that everyone in the state, with few exceptions, must wear face coverings in public starting Friday. Heightened mask requirements were initially sparked by the surge in cases in the Yakima area, but as more counties have moved into Phase 2 and summer has kicked in along with social gatherings, more counties are starting to see upticks.
Wearing masks slows the transmission of the coronavirus, and Campbell said covering your face is a communal responsibility.
“I know everyone thinks about it as a individual issue, but my neighbor can’t open his business because we aren’t in Phase 3,” he said. “We all have a personal responsibility to get things moving and get to Phase 3.”
Campbell said people have become complacent in taking health safety measures, such as washing hands, practicing social distancing and wearing masks.
“I worry about people dropping their guard, and we have another flare up,” he said.
He is troubled by face covering becoming a political issue.
“The biggest thing we have to overcome is this is not a political thing — this is a medical,” he said.
Inslee on Tuesday didn’t rule out moving counties back in phases.
“As far as moving backwards, again, if we saw activity that we were unable to suppress with good masking, and good contract tracing, and good isolation, and we saw a curve that was going to lead to a potential overwhelming of the medical system, that is possible to have to go back in phases,” Inslee said. “We cannot rule that out.”
He added that he remained optimistic that individuals will take responsibility to help slow the spread of COVID-19.
Chen’s recommendations for improving the situation: Stay close to home, keep interactions and gatherings within a small circle of friends and family, get tested if you’ve been exposed or participated in a large gathering, and continue to practice good hygiene, along with wearing a mask.
A list of available testing locations are at www.tpchd.org/covidtest.
This story was originally published June 24, 2020 at 6:00 PM.
