PORT ANGELES – As Clallam County’s health officer sees it, don’t count on any events or gatherings for the rest of summer here.
Dr. Allison Berry Unthank says it’s not realistic that Clallam County will be able to get to Phase 4 re-opening of the economy until at least September.
Phase 4 is the phase under the Governor’s plan that would allow a return to gatherings of groups of 50 or more.
Unthank told a briefing this week, she thinks it will take at least six weeks between each of the upcoming reopening phases. She doesn’t expect Clallam County to get to Phase 2 until at least June 1st. And efforts to move to Phase 2 early are moot.
“There was some hope raised by our representatives that we might be able to go to ‘Phase Two’ earlier. I don’t think that’s gonna happen in terms of the state set out clear criteria for how you get in the ‘Phase 2’ and we just don’t meet it. What I am advocating for is the state is building a regional reopening plan, which would allow regions with lower case numbers being able to move forward and not quite the bar of no cases at all. But I think it’s a more reasonable data metric, which is less than 5% of tests come back positive. I think that’s a much truer measure of your epidemic.”
Unthank says the next phases will take months to accomplish.
“When we go to ‘Phase 2’, because of the amount of things that open, we anticipate we will see quite a few more cases and we will need to see those cases come back down before we would move to the next phase after that. And so I anticipate between once we go to ‘Phase 2’ we’ll probably be in that for at least six weeks. So really the earliest we would be at ‘Phase 3’ reopening is July 15th. And again, I think we’d be in that at least six weeks before we move forward. So ‘Phase 4’ would be the earliest I would see that is September 1st.”
At this point, one of the biggest local events still on the books is the Clallam County Fair. Organizers say they’re still moving forward with plans for the fair the third weekend in August.