Reopening RI: Raimondo Outlines Benchmarks For Phase Two

PROVIDENCE, RI — Rhode Island is expected to enter phase two of reopening in the first week of June, Gov. Gina Raimondo announced Friday. She outlined four benchmarks that will need to be met to ensure the state is ready to further relax restrictions. The new timeline is approximately double the expected length of each phase from Raimondo's originally predicted 14 days.

"In general you should think about a month between phases," Raimondo said. "Phase two, assuming everything goes well, should start around the beginning of June."

To safely begin phase two, the state will have to meet the follow benchmarks, Raimondo said.

1. Hospital capacity: To make sure hospitals do not get overwhelmed, total bed capacity must stay below 70 percent, both overall and in intensive care units, Raimondo said. At this time, Rhode Island's hospitals are currently at 30 percent capacity with coronavirus patients, and 20 percent in ICUs.
2. New hospitalizations: The number of new hospitalizations is a good indicator of overall trends, Raimondo said. Ideally, the state will continue to see fewer than 30 hospitalizations per day. If there are 50 to 60 people hospitalized per day, the state may need to reimpose restrictions.
3. Rate of spread: The rate at which infected people infect others, or r-value, must stay at or below 1.1, Raimondo said. At this time, Rhode Island is just below 1, which means that each person with COVID-19, on average, infects just one other person. At the height of the outbreak in March, that value was 3, Raimondo said, which was "unsustainable and scary."
4. Doubling rate of hospitalizations: At this time, the number of hospitalizations in Rhode Island is holding steady, Raimondo said, compared to doubling every two to three days in March when the virus was "running away with itself." To successfully move forward, the goal is to have the rate of hospitalizations double in a month or longer, Raimondo said.

Along with these benchmarks, the state will also assess its systems, such as testing capacity, strength of contact tracing and ability to quickly respond to outbreaks.

"Some people are frustrated it's too slow," Raimondo said. "I get that. I wish I could go faster. The problem is that if you do that, two or three weeks from now, you could run into an overwhelmed hospital."

While it can be frustrating to have the schedules so uncertain or change, it's impossible to make a certain plan, Raimondo said, because the data changes day-to-day.

"If you're asking today exactly the date of phase two, I don't know," Raimondo said. "It is going to be changing goal posts. I don't set the goal posts. The virus sets the goal posts."

As of Friday, the goal is to start phase two at the beginning of June and phase three at the beginning of July. While Raimondo initially said the plan was to reopen beaches in time for Memorial Day, it will likely to a little later, perhaps as soon as the weekend after.

Businesses were reminded that while it is necessary to complete COVID-19 preparedness plans before reopening, they do not need to be submitted to the state and should instead be kept on file, Raimondo said. This decision was made in an effort to make the reopening process as easy on business owners as possible.

Patch editor Scott Souza contributed to this report.