Inslee shares goals for phased re-opening

Washington governor Jay Inslee's stay-at-home order expires May 4, but for now, that's an arbitrary date. Inslee has set some targets for when a gradual, phased lifting of restrictions could begin, he said at an April 15 virtual press conference.

Lifting some parts of the order by May 4 is a possibility, he said, but a lot has to happen before then. The governor wants the number of Covid-19 infections to decrease further and he wants to have a system ready to rapidly test and isolate people, and a system to immediately perform a thorough trace of their recent contacts to find others who may be infected.

“We have to have both success of our social distancing we now are involved in to drive the numbers down and this new sort of fire brigade approach to test people very rapidly and isolate them very rapidly,” Inslee said. “Both of those things have to exist before we can push the go button for this true transition.”

Inslee didn't say a number of infections or date at which he would begin to lift restrictions. If restrictions are lifted too early, a second wave of the virus could be worse than the first, with more deaths than the state is currently experiencing, he said.

The governor showed several simulated models that showed variations on how many people could be infected in the future. One model showed that under current movement restrictions, the number of new cases is declining. A different model, however, suggests that the number of cases is currently holding steady; every person infected with the virus is, on averaging, infecting one other person.

“This model suggests that we need to do more to bend this curve so it goes down. For that reason, we’re not out of the woods yet,” he said.

The state is making progress on expanding test capacity, but that's currently limited by a shortage of test kits – the actual swabs, sterile tubes, and viral test medium needed to collect a sample and transport it to a lab. Labs in the state could potentially process 13,000 tests per day, but there are only enough test kits for 4-5,000 per day, he said.

“This sounds ridiculous; it is,” Inslee said. “But they simply do not exist in the United Sates at this point.”

When asked whether it's possible to have all this stuff in place – test kits, personnel and facilities for rapid testing, isolation and contact tracing – by May 4, the governor said there is “some possibility those things can happen.”

“I wish I could tell you when that transition point will be, but I know this: we want it to come as fast as possible, we know the order is in place at least through May 4, add we know the more work we do today, the faster that transition point is going to come,” he said.