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When will Pierce County qualify to reopen under Phase 2? Not until case counts go lower
Story has been updated.
With all the talk about getting counties to the different phases of reopening in Washington, you might be wondering when Pierce County gets the green light.
Not yet, according to state and local officials, and we’d be hard-pressed to reach Phase 2 before June 1.
The state has allowed some counties to apply for variances to allow them to move to Phase 2 before the current “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” order ends on June 1. Among the criteria, a county “must have an average of less than 10 new cases per 100,000 residents over a 14-day period,” according to the Department of Health.
Additionally, a county must keep up with testing and disease investigation if cases increase and have plans to help people isolate or quarantine if necessary.
Gov. Jay Inslee, in a statement issued Friday, said: “We are making good progress as we continue to open Washington in segments. Currently, one-third of our state is now eligible to move into Phase 2. We are hard at work to determine next steps as we move closer to the May 31 expiration of my current order. As I have repeatedly said before, these are decisions that are driven by public health data and science, not the calendar.”
Pierce County so far is not among those succeeding in hitting the case-count threshold, even with new cases only showing up in a handful of areas in recent days.
In a blog post published Friday by the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department, some of the terms of progress can be found within the county’s daily case counts.
Given our population, “Pierce County would need to have fewer than 90 cases over a 14-day period to qualify,” wrote Nigel Turner, Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department’s Director of Communicable Disease, in the blog post.
“That means an average of about six new cases a day.”
Some days have been far better than others for the county. On Thursday, the county only reported four new cases and one new death. On Friday, there were nine new cases and one new death.
May 18 was a different story, with 20 new cases and two deaths.
“We have seen 216 new cases over the last 14 days, an average of about 15 per day,” Turner wrote.
He noted, “We continue to see encouraging signs. We had 10 or fewer cases 6 times during that period.”
County Executive Bruce Dammeier, taking part in the COVID-19 Business Info Series call with area businesses on Friday, attributed the 20-case spike at least in part to more aggressive testing of long-term congregate care facilities, where the virus can take hold and spread rapidly.
As Dammeier explained, given the 14-day criteria, a spike like what occurred May 18 can mean the county would need a string of days with zero new cases. And for now, “that’s not realistically possible,” he said.
Edie Jeffers, communications manager for the local health department, told The News Tribune in an email May 25 that as for the spike on May 18, “the cases were small increases in several different areas of the county and not a result of increased testing at long-term care facilities.
“We have regularly shared in blogs, social media posts, and in public meetings about more testing happening in long-term care centers. And several weeks ago, we had spikes in certain geographic areas from new cases at long-term care facilities. Given that we’ve had many cases in these settings and are doing more testing, it’s a reasonable conclusion to draw but was not a factor on May 18.”
Pierce County has seen its number of COVID-19 cases involving congregate care facilities grow from 252 in late April to 445 this week, an increase of more than 76 percent.
Pierce County’s total case count from the same time period has risen just slightly more than 30 percent. Subtract the care facility cases, and the total cases have increased just slightly more than 20 percent.
One idea, Dammeier suggested in Friday’s call, would be to take the long-term care facilities count out of the community-wide case count criteria while continuing to test at the sites, recognizing the continuing need to protect the most vulnerable.
No word yet whether the state will revise criteria in that manner.
“The disease is slowly fading, and slowly decreasing ... I wish it would decrease quicker,” Dammeier added.
As for the other criteria, there is a Tacoma site to help people isolate themselves from others, which opened April 8.
Turner wrote that the department also is “working to build a team of disease investigators to help contain outbreaks if they occur. Some of our staff will put aside their regular duties to join that team, and we will also bring in others to help.”
The department has also issued its “Public Health Long-Term Testing and Investigation Plan” online.
In an April 24 blog, the health department noted at that time it had more than 15 case and contact investigators, and about 60 staff and volunteers also trained for the work, “so we can scale up when our caseload requires it.”
“Additional staff support this team on everything from data reporting to providing technical assistance to healthcare providers.”
That blog post added that “If we experience a large surge in cases in Pierce County over the coming months, public health is planning to scale up to 150-200 investigators.”
(As of May 26, the health department had 12 contact tracers, and another 8 for facility investigations — drop teams — who are also available for surge capacity if needed, according to Jeffers.)
For now, the focus is to keep the spread of the virus minimal.
“As we move into the three-day weekend, I urge Washingtonians to keep working diligently to protect your families and communities. Please continue to physically distance, spend time with those in your household and stay close to where you live,” Inslee said Friday in his office’s news release.
Turner reiterated the tips the health department consistently has turned to in slowing the spread: Stay home, practice good hygiene and wear a mask when you cannot socially distance.
“We all want to get back to normal as soon as we can,” Turner wrote Friday. “And it will take all of us working together to get there.”
This story was updated May 26 to add contact tracing staff numbers and a link to the health department’s long-term plan, and to add comment from the health department to give context to the May 18 case numbers.
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