Washington's Coronavirus Risk Dials Show Improvement

OLYMPIA, WA — Washington updated the state's official coronavirus risk assessment dashboard for the first time Wednesday, recording some improvement among three of the five "dials" officials use to determine how and when to lift restrictions.

View the risk assessment dashboard here.

Testing Capacity and Availability

According to the governor's office, daily testing capacity continued to improve this week, surpassing 6,000 daily tests for the first time. Additionally, positivity rates for new tests dropped to around 5% as a higher number of samples were processed.

State officials said critical shipments of testing supplies have begun to arrive, but the risk of "logistical bottlenecks" persists, as each kit requires special swabs and transport mediums from the federal government.

"There is also a significant amount of work remaining before the state can dramatically ramp up testing volume and ensure that all communities and individuals have adequate access to testing," the governor's office wrote.

Gov. Jay Inslee has said his goal is for the state to reach the ability to process 20,000 tests per day.

Case and Contact Investigations

Another area of improvement identified Wednesday was in the state's effort to train and deploy a large contact-tracing team to rapidly isolate people with potential COVID-19 illnesses and quarantine their contacts.

"There is some encouraging movement in case and contact tracing metrics due to the number of workers that have been hired and trained," the governor's office wrote. "As more people come on board, there is reason for optimism that this trend will continue."

Risk to Vulnerable Populations

The dial measuring the overall risk level among vulnerable populations also showed some improvement in the first batch of updates. The metric considers the number of outbreaks in long-term care facilities every week and considers the demographic data to determine whether COVID-19 is affected some populations disproportionately.

"These results give a slight improvement from last week, but there is still work to be done to understand and address impacts to other vulnerable communities," the governor's office wrote.

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The two other dials, measuring the health care system's readiness and overall disease activity remained flat. State officials noted some improvement in the number of positive tests, but the transmission rate and case counts remain "stubbornly flat." Washington reported more than 300 new coronavirus cases across the state Wednesday afternoon.

The state will update the dials to reflect the latest data every Wednesday.