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Spokane Looks To State For Covid Testing Help spokanepublicradio.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from spokanepublicradio.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
SPR s Doug Nadvornick reports.
Spokane County’s chances of staying in Phase 3 of Washington’s coronavirus reopening protocol beyond the first week of May are becoming more tenuous.
Interim Health Officer Francisco Velazquez says the county is failing one of the two metrics state officials consider when evaluating counties’ progress.
That’s the two-week case rate. The county is at 295 cases per 100-thousand residents, well above the state’s acceptable standard of 200. In the other metric, hospitalizations, he says the county is teetering around the acceptable level of 5%.
“We’ve gone over 5% a couple of times. We were at 5.3% Tuesday. So we’ve fluctuated around that 5%, that magical number, for hospitalization. Our case rate is high. It’s going to be hard to bring it back below 200. We’re going to have to do some work on that. So it’s not clear if we’re going to be able to continue on Phase 3, he said.