The Perfect Enemy | State’s remaining COVID-19 orders lifting with state of emergency ending soon

OLYMPIA, Wash. — Thirteen of Gov. Jay Inslee’s remaining COVID-19 health care-related orders were lifted on Thursday.

The remaining 10 orders, including the underlying state of emergency, will be lifted on Oct. 31.

All other orders and proclamations have already been lifted.

A COVID-19 state of emergency was declared in Washington on Feb. 29, 2020, according to the governor’s office.

In March, Inslee closed schools and nonessential businesses and banned large public gatherings.

A statewide mask mandate went into effect on June 24, 2020.

Although the state’s emergency orders are ending, the statewide face covering order will remain in place for health care workers, long-term care settings, and correctional facilities.

Vaccination requirements for health care and education workers will end on Oct. 31, though employers can require vaccines if they choose.

“We’ve come a long way the past two years in developing the tools that allow us to adapt and live with COVID-19,” Inslee said last month, when he announced the orders would be ending. “Ending this order does not mean we take it less seriously or will lose focus on how this virus has changed the way we live. We will continue our commitments to the public’s well-being, but simply through different tools that are now more appropriate for the era we’ve entered.”

The governor further mentioned that with Washington having been the first state in the country with a reported case of COVID-19, the state’s mitigation measures resulted in one of the lowest per capita death rates in the U.S.

Inslee’s office estimates that if the rest of the nation had the same death rate as Washington’s, about 433,000 lives would have been saved.