Montgomery County Not Yet Ready To Reopen: Officials

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, MD – Montgomery County is not yet ready to begin phased reopening, according to local officials who are watching coronavirus trends closely in order to determine a reasonable timeframe for reopening.

In a news conference Wednesday, County Executive Marc Elrich said he will feel comfortable reopening the county when health officials give the OK.

"The numbers continue to trouble me a little bit," he said. "I am confident we will move toward reopening. We will do it gradually – the pace will depend on control of the cases and the hospitalizations."

Elrich said an important factor in reopening is the number of intensive care beds in use.

"If we were to reopen and see a serious uptick in cases like the ramp that took us to where we are, if that were to resume, we would swamp hospital capacity, and we can't afford to do that," he said.

Improved testing ability and contact tracing will be helpful tools to use as indicator for when the county can safely reopen, according to Dr. Travis Gayles, county health officer.

"The ability to be able to test not only symptomatic individual but asymptomatic individuals also allows for the opportunity of identifying some of these cases that otherwise we wouldn't have known," Gayles said. "It's hopeful that all of these thing working together will get us to the point where we're seeing less cases, we're seeing less death rates, but we have the mechanisms and infrastructure to be able to test and identify folks quickly."

Gayles said the county is closely watching 14-day trends in number of cases, hospitalizations, deaths and ICU bed capacity in order to determine when it will be safe to reopen.

In nine of out the past 14 days, the county has seen an overall decrease in number of cases. In eight of the past 14 days, the county has seen a decrease in coronavirus-related deaths. In 10 of the past 14 days, the county has seen a decrease in hospitalizations.

Where there has not been much improvement, Gayles said, is in the percentage of ICU beds in use. For example, four of the six hospitals in the county have been at capacity for ICU beds in the past week.

One of the most significant thresholds for reopening is having a test positivity rate below 15 percent. Test positivity refers to the percent of people who test positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, out of the total number of people tested. Montgomery County currently has a 22 percent test positivity. The state of Maryland currently has a 19 percent test positivity.

With increased contact tracing, the county will be able to contact the majority of people who may have been primary contacts with a positive case within 24 hours, Gayles said.

If the trends continue the way they have been, Elrich said the county should be able to start phased reopening within the next week or two. An updated estimation on opening requirements should be released this week.

"It's all dependent upon people following the rules," he said. "None of us is happy being closed. " But if everybody is focused on a day instead of what it’s going to take to get to that day it causes more problems than it's worth."