Washington Gov. Jay Inslee made a public push for people to get vaccinated Thursday, as a "fourth wave" of the coronavirus has hit the state potentially sending more counties on a phase rollback, including King County.
The announcement comes as metrics show that case rates and hospitalizations continue to trend upward. "We look at these metrics really carefully, we think it's very likely that we will go past that threshold in the coming weeks," Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said matter-of-factly to KING 5.
King County has now exceeded one metric it needs to stay under in order to remain in Phase 3, and is perilously close to exceeding the other.
The state has mandated that a county must have no more than 200 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents in 14 days, and no more than five new hospitalizations per 100,000 people in 7 days.