OLYMPIA — Gov. Jay Inslee announced Thursday tighter restrictions on bars, restaurants, fitness centers, weddings and funerals as new confirmed cases of the new coronavirus rise.
Thursday’s announcements are the most sweeping rollback so far to the governor’s original four-phase reopening plan.
And it comes as Washington sees its highest daily new cases of the pandemic. Almost every part of the state is “on the path to runaway transmission rates of COVID-19,” state health officials said this week.
To counter that, Inslee announced a host of new restrictions that includes:
• Prohibiting indoor dining at restaurants to members of the same household. People meeting from different households can still dine outdoors.
• No indoor service at any bar, brewery, tavern, winery or distillery, regardless of whether food is being served.
• For counties in the third phase of the four-part plan, restaurant table sizes must be reduced to five people, and indoor occupancy to 50%.
• Restaurants must also close down game areas, such as for video games, pool tables and darts, until their county has reached the fourth phase.
• Second-phase counties — like King, Pierce and Snohomish — must limit indoor fitness spaces to five customers at a time. Those indoor places include but are not limited to gyms, pools, fitness studios and tennis facilities.
• Third-phase counties must cap indoor fitness occupancy to 25% and not more than 10 people to a group class, not including their instructor.
• Indoor entertainment spaces — like bowling alleys, arcades, mini-golf and card rooms — are not allowed to open until the fourth phase.
• Indoor movie occupancy for counties in the third phase is now limited to 25% capacity.
The governor also announced a new ban on receptions at weddings and funerals, which will take effect starting in two weeks.
Wedding and funeral ceremonies will still be allowed, but they will be restricted in all counties to an indoor occupancy of 20% capacity or as many as 30 people, whichever is less.
It wasn’t immediately clear when the new restrictions on businesses were set to take effect. Business owners with questions about how the emergency orders apply to them can contact the governor’s office via webform at: https://coronavirus.wa.gov/how-you-can-help/covid-19-business-and-worker-inquiries.
The governor also announced Thursday that he will announce an extension of the current moratorium on evictions. The current order is set to expire Aug. 1.
Housing and homelessness experts have warned of a surge of homelessness that could follow once eviction bans expire.
One analysis from Columbia University economist Brendan O’Flaherty published in the spring projected that the U.S. could see a 40 to 45% increase in homelessness — roughly 250,000 people — due to the COVID-related economic downturn.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, more than 8% of renters surveyed in Washington state between July 9 and July 14 said they had no confidence they would be able to pay next month’s rent.
Low-income renters were even less likely to say they could pay rent — more than 14% of survey respondents making less than $35,000 weren’t confident they could make rent next month.
