State officials announce further loosening of virus restrictions at McKee’s first COVID briefing
PROVIDENCE — With vaccines growing increasingly available and COVID-19 infection data continuing to trend in a mostly positive direction, state officials announced the further relaxation of social distancing restrictions on fitness centers, funeral parlors and restaurants yesterday.
On his second full day on the job, Gov. Daniel McKee and Health Director Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott also said their goal is to make the vaccine available to the next priority groups by March 14, including teachers and school staff, all people 60-64 years old, and anyone 16-59 years old who has underlying health conditions.
Thanks to the availability of a third vaccine, the one-shot Johnson & Johnson product, Alexander-Scott said she is confident the state will be able to reach all the new priority groups simultaneously.
Presently only people over 65 years old are eligible to get the vaccine at the three state-run sites – and many municipal PODs, or points of distribution, are still working on people over 75. But RIDOH, which only two weeks ago had been ranked at the bottom of the nation in the pace of vaccine distribution, is now checking in at seventh place, said McKee.
“We’re just going to keep on going up the charts,” McKee said. “Over the next few weeks our team will continue to build on this momentum.”
So far, about 290,000 Rhode Islanders have received at least one dose of the Pfizer or Moderna two-shot vaccines, including about 80 percent of people over 75 and 60 percent of people who are 65-74 years old.
Saying its imperative to get kids fully back in school, McKee said he would have more to say about a plan get all teachers and other school staffers vaccinated in about a week.
“We know Rhode Island is just one of a few states in the nation that is absent a plan to get teachers and school staff vaccinated,” McKee said. “And now is the time to do it.”
Education Commissioner Angelica Infante-Green, in a rare appearance at one of the weekly briefings, praised McKee for making the protection of teachers a priority.
Even though infection rates in
schools are tracking at about 1 percent – even in communities where ambient infection rates are much higher – getting educators and support workers fully vaccinated will bring schools a step closer to operating normally, according to Infante-Green.
“We understand the importance of putting our educators as a priority as we move forward,” she said. “I have to thank our governor... I can’t tell you how we sighed – it was a breath of relief for all of us because it’s been an incredibly long year.”
In addition to Alexander-Scott, McKee shared the stage with Commerce Secretary Stefan Pryor, who announced the further relaxation of restrictions on indoor gatherings for certain retail establishments.
Effective today, the indoor capacity of gyms and fitness centers will increase from 125 to 100 square feet for every person inside. For larger venues, he observed, the result could mean “dozens” of additional patrons.
For restaurants, the indoor seating capacity has expanded from 50 percent to 66 percent, which is more relaxed than any time since the post-Thanksgiving pause.
Funeral homes have been operating under an “extremely painful” indoor capacity of just 15 visitors, but that limit increases to 30, Pryor said.
Next up is catered events, including weddings. Pryor said some fine-tuning of the prevailing caps on indoor gatherings for such assemblies will be announced shortly.
“Our goal is to identify areas where we can provide business with incremental flexibility that will not impact our hospitalization rates or positivity rates,” said McKee.
McKee said the expansion of regional state sites will be a key component of the state’s strategy for ramping up the pace of the vaccine rollout as supplies become increasingly available. The state already announced a week ago that two more regional sites will open at an old Benny’s store in Middletown and the former Sears Roebuck on Diamond Hill Road in Woonsocket.
There weren’t any new details on a timeline for those, except that the health director said Middletown would open before Woonsocket, probably next week or the week after.
The continued easing of retail restrictions comes as the latest data show that the trend of steady improvement over a period of weeks is stable, said Alexander-Scott.
The weekly rolling average of new infections crept up slightly from 2 to 2.1 percent, she said. On the latest 24 hours crop of tests, it was 1.9 percent.
But hospitalization rates continue to plummet, with 125 admissions yesterday, down from 176 the week before. That’s a decline of about 73 percent since November. Death rates have also dropped about 80 percent since around that time.
There were 375 new cases of coronavirus in the last day, bringing the total number of illnesses to nearly 128,000 since the onset of the pandemic one year ago this week. A total of 2,539 deaths in Rhode Island have been attributed to the virus since then.
Despite the promising data and increased availability of vaccine, Alexander-Scott said health officials continue to monitor infections caused by newly emerging variants of COVID-19, which may be more contagious and illness-inducing than the dominant strain. Several more cases of the former were detected in Rhode Island recently, she said, adding, “That’s something we’re obviously keeping our eye on.”
One upside, she said, is that evidence suggests the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is high-p ly effective against emerging variants. The state has re-b ceived an initial shipment of 9,100 doses of the product and is already working to funnel them to vaccination sites.
Vaccines are finding their way into the arms of Rhode Islanders at about 8,000 doses per day, she said, which isp an increase of about 210 percent since the beginning of the vaccination program.