Whitman County to move to next phase of reopening

State health authorities have approved a request from local leaders allowing Whitman County to enter Phase 2 of Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s four-phase plan to reopen the state’s economy.

Under the governor’s “Safe Start” plan, counties with a population less than 75,000 can get approval to move to Phase 2 if they have not had a new COVID-19 case in three weeks. Despite an announcement of new confirmed cases of the disease on both Thursday and Friday, Whitman County was found to have met that requirement because it didn’t have a confirmed case between April 22 and Wednesday, a span of 21 days.

With the approval, Pullman City Supervisor Adam Lincoln said he is feeling “cautiously optimistic” — but noted there is still a lot of uncertainty surrounding the plan, including when regions will be permitted to move to Phase 3.

“It’s a good step forward — mostly, I’m hoping that it really means that the curve of how many people are going to be getting this really is trending downward,” Lincoln said. “For the economy, it’ll be nice to get things started in some fashion or another.”

Phase 2 allows in-store retail operations to resume with limitations. Dine-in restaurants and taverns can open at 50-percent capacity and must follow strict social distancing and cleanliness guidelines. Manufacturing businesses may also operate under strict guidelines.

Jill Bielenberg, co-owner of Birch and Barley restaurant, echoed Lincoln’s caution, saying returning to dine-in service will be similar to opening a restaurant for the first time — except when they first opened, potential customers had no reason to be cautious about going out in public.

“I think we are excited and nervous,” Bielenberg said. “You just want to make sure that everybody is safe and healthy — there’s a lot of planning and prep going into it.”

While the move to Phase 2 was technically effective immediately, Bielenberg said there are some adjustments to be made before the restaurant is prepared to serve people in person once more. She said she expects Birch and Barley will officially reopen its dining room for limited hours sometime next week.

Whitman County Commissioner Art Swannack said he’s pleased with the approval but would be even happier if there was a clearer path for regions to move to Phase 3. Swannack said he thinks people need just a little more latitude to get out of their homes and unwind. He said he worries that if people aren’t given a bit more freedom soon, they may just ignore the orders and guidelines completely, possibly leading to the kind of outbreak that would bring about more shutdown orders.

He said Whitman County’s battle with COVID-19 has been relatively mild compared with other parts of the state, noting that nobody has died or been hospitalized with a confirmed case of the disease. He said he hopes the approval to move to Phase 2 is an indication of positive momentum in the region.

“It’s probably a little bit of an experiment to see how it works — based on what I’ve seen for data over the last month or so, it looks like we have plenty of hospital capacity with the population we have right now,” Swannack said. “We seem to have occasional cases here and there — we’ve had two in the last couple days — but I haven’t had an indication that they’re concerned about one or two cases happening.”

More details about the “Safe Start” plan can be found at coronavirus.wa.gov/what-you-need-know/safe-start.

Scott Jackson can be reached at sjackson@dnews.com.