Gov. Inslee announces phased plan for resuming visits at long-term care facilities
Gov. Jay Inslee announced Thursday a phased plan for resuming visits and other activities at long-term care facilities.
The plan to ease visitation restrictions imposed in the spring to slow the spread of COVID-19 has four phases and takes effect Wednesday.
“We have come far enough both in our restraint of the pandemic and in our ability to develop protocols that will work to continue to protect the physical health of our residents while giving them much greater contact with loved ones in visitation, in many many contexts,” Inslee said at a virtual press conference Thursday.
“This is good not just for the people in long-term care, but for their relatives as well.”
The state’s roughly 4,000 long-term care facilities — such as nursing homes, assisted living facilities and adult family homes — will start in phase one and apply to advance to other less restrictive phases.
The plan is separate from the state’s Safe Start plan, though Department of Social and Health Services Secretary Cheryl Strange said it mirrors it. She joined Inslee on the call.
“You cannot be higher in a long-term care facility or phase than the current county is,” Strange said in response to a reporter’s question.
According to DSHS and the governor’s office:
Compassionate care visits, window visits, remote visitors, and a limit of two outdoor visits a day will be allowed in Phase 1. Communal dining and other group activities won’t be recommended.
Phase 2 will allow indoor visits when remote or outdoor visits won’t work, and each resident will be limited to one indoor visitor. Visitors will be checked for symptoms and will be required to wear masks. Limited group activities will be allowed.
In Phase 3 residents will be able to leave a facility if they socially distance, wear a mask, and are checked for symptoms when they get back. More visits will be allowed in this phase, but they’ll still be limited and encouraged to be held outside. Visitors in this phase will be able to join in group activities.
Facilities will use their regular procedures for visits and group activities in Phase 4, but will still have testing and screening protocols for COVID-19. No county has reached Phase 4 yet.
Facilities will need to have 28 days without any residents or staff testing positive to advance phases, and they have to have at least 14 days’ worth of personal protective equipment. A facility won’t be allowed to advance if community coronavirus transmission rates are high.
To be in Phase 2, for instance, Strange said cases in a facility’s community will need to be between 25 and 75 cases per 100,000 people for two weeks. To be in Phase 3, that number will be 10 to 25 cases per 100,000 people. Advancing to Phase 4 will require less than 10 cases per 100,000.
Recent data showed Thurston County at 66.2 cases per 100,000 over a two-week period, and Pierce County reported a 14-day case rate of 144.5 cases per 100,000 people Thursday.
As of Wednesday, the most recent data available showed Whatcom County at 63.9 cases per 100,000, Benton County at 313, and Franklin County at 578 cases per 100,000.
State Secretary of Health John Wiesman was on the Thursday’s call. He reiterated that it’s important for everyone to have “fewer, shorter, and safer interactions,” along with social distancing and masks, to control the spread of the virus.
He said there have been 5,694 COVID-19 cases associated with long-term care facilities — which includes residents, employees, or visitors — and 894 deaths. That’s 10 percent of the state’s cases and about 56 percent of fatalities, he said.
“We can’t be sure that they necessarily got these at a long-term care facility for all of those,” he said, “... but we know they were associated somehow at a long-term care facility.”
Strange said the facilities “quickly became the epicenter of the pandemic,” and that “families have had to endure the unthinkable, saying goodbye to loved ones on virtual platforms like Facetime or Zoom.”
She said the “difficult decision to restrict visitors bought DSHS time,” and that the new plan is “designed to keep Washingtonians that are highly susceptible to this virus safe and healthy during the pandemic, while providing them with much-needed quality time with their loved ones.”
This story was originally published August 6, 2020 at 2:42 PM with the headline "Gov. Inslee announces phased plan for resuming visits at long-term care facilities."
