Mayor Harrell and Gov. Inslee at an appearance at Capitol Hill’s Miller Community Center earlier this year

The state of emergency in Seattle and Washington declared nearly three years ago over COVID-19 ends today.

The lifting of the February 2020 emergency orders won’t change many day to day activities and rules around the city. Many elements of the emergency have already been canceled but the end of the emergency marks a new milestone in emerging from the pandemic across the state with the lifting of requirements like vaccination mandates.

“While we are grateful for the thousands of lives we saved together, thousands of lives were also lost, and many more were changed forever,” Gov. Jay Inslee said last week. “The past two and a half years have been some of the hardest anyone can remember. Through the loss and suffering, we did not lose faith and we did not abandon each other. Working together, we saved countless thousands of lives.”

Through the pandemic, Capitol HIll residents and businesses went through new restrictions and requirements including social distancing, mask, and vaccination mandates as officials tried to fine tune the public response to slowing the spread of the virus. The Inslee administration says its state of emergency orders resulted in Washington “having one of the lowest COVID death rates across all 50 states for the pandemic.”

The end of the emergency orders will more fully unhinge a complicated framework of legal structures and policies for organizations and businesses that have built rules and requirements around the official emergency status. Examples include the crisis standards of care put in place under the emergency by hospitals and health care systems to help prioritize staffing and resources.

The lifting of emergency status will not end all restrictions around the pandemic. The state’s
Department of Labor and Industries COVID-19 rules remain in effect including requirements that employees remain out of the workplace for at least five days if they test positive or have COVID-19 symptoms.

State masking requirements including mandates at all medical and long-term care facilities also remain in place.

The state’s vaccination requirements for health care and education workers will now end but employers are able to include the requirements. Inslee says COVID-19 vaccination will remain a condition of employment at most state agencies.

Unwinding the emergency will continue to erode and, in some cases, bring the end of policies and guidelines put in place during the pandemic. A return to levels of day to day staffing, operations, and activities seen before COVID-19’s emergence seems unlikely.

Many decisions like whether to mask inside a restaurant or on the bus are already personal. Around 74% of the state’s population is considered fully vaccinated with officials urging people to be diligent about getting a booster headed into fall and winter. You can learn more about vaccination options in King County here.

For now, the spread of COVID has slowed to some of its lowest reported levels of the pandemic. Outcomes, thanks to vaccination, are better and symptoms, more mild with major drops in hospitalization and death rates.

The insured, meanwhile, have access to a variety of testing while public health and the University of Washington continue to offer testing for those without insurance. The  county’s numbers continue to drop with around 55 positive cases per 100,000 people reported over the past week — down from more than 300 per week this summer.

HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.

Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.