Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
DAVENPORT – Any concerns Lincoln County residents may have had about the county regressing back to Phase 2 of Gov. Jay Inslee’s state re-opening plan can be quelled for at least another three weeks. Lincoln County was not on the list of three counties that the governor moved back to Phase 2 based on COVID-19 metrics April 12.
Whitman, Pierce and Cowlitz counties didn’t make the Phase 3 cut according to Inslee’s new metrics and will move back to Phase 2 effective April 16.
But here, residents can breathe a sigh of relief as restaurants, bars and gyms are allowed to continue operating at 50% capacity. In Phase 2, that would be restricted to 25% capacity.
Additionally, Phase 3 allows for up to 50% capacity at sports games, or 400 spectators, whichever is fewer. Phase 3 also allows for competitions in the highest risk sports, basketball and wrestling. Those seasons are scheduled to get under way here in May after the conclusion of spring sports.
Because Lincoln County is considered a small county (less than 50,000 people per Inslee’s metrics), it was evaluated on new COVID-19 cases over 14 days and new COVID-19 hospitalizations over seven days.
According to the most recent update from the Lincoln County Department of Health, the county stayed around 48 COVID-19 cases in the last two weeks and had just one hospitalization. Over 100 cases and over three hospitalizations in that time span would’ve put the county in trouble, but a recent outbreak in the schools wasn’t enough to threaten a phase rollback.
Inslee announced last week a change to the metrics where a county would have to fail both metric evaluations of total cases and hospitalizations to move back a phase, instead of just one, as he had previously indicated.
As of today’s issue, all residents in Washington 16 or older are eligible to receive their COVID-19 vaccine. Over 2,100 people in Lincoln County have been vaccinated so far.
Drew Lawson is the editor of the Davenport Times. He is a graduate of Eastern Washington University.
Reader Comments(0)