GRANT COUNTY — While counties work to meet state-issued guidelines to reopen their economies, and try to not have that progress reversed, those guidelines continue to be broadened. And they aren’t hard and fast to begin with.

On Friday, Gov. Jay Inslee announced a shift from his earlier “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” order to “Safe Start,” meant to give counties more flexibility in demonstrating that they can safely resume additional economic activities.

The most visible metric, the number of new cases of COVID-19 in a two-week period, is a prime example of that slow broadening of guidelines. Initially, counties had to have zero cases in a two-week period to move to Phase 2, then later the requirement was 10 cases per 100,000 residents in a two-week period.

As of Friday, that metric had been expanded again, to 25 cases per 100,000 in a two-week period.

The Washington State Department of Health clearly defines the latest metrics for reopening, such as the biweekly caseload, or requirements for there to be 50 tests performed for every single test that comes back positive, a 2 percent positive rate.

However, state agencies have recently stressed that these are ideal targets, not mandatory. For instance, at no point since the pandemic began has Grant County had fewer than 7 percent of tests coming back positive, yet it was issued a Phase 2 variance.

Conversely, while failure to maintain those metrics is in some ways used to gauge whether a county needs to return to an earlier phase, the process is not automatic. As of Monday, Grant County had seen 47 positive cases in the previous two weeks, county Health Officer Alexander Brzezny wrote in a statement.

While concerns have been raised that conditions need to improve for the county to continue reopening, no action has been taken yet by the state to revoke the county’s Phase 2 status, according to state officials.

A county health officer can request to take the county they oversee back to a previous phase if they deem it to be necessary, said Jessica Baggett, external communications supervisor for the Washington State Department of Health. However, if conditions deteriorate in a county and a local health officer doesn’t request that the county move back into a previous phase, the DOH secretary can make the final determination, Baggett said.

That decision won’t be made by DOH without first consulting with local officials, Baggett added, and it’s not clear whether guidelines could be loosened further before any decisions would be made to revoke or modify a county’s Phase 2 status.

“We’ve changed the criteria over time, and we’re adjusting those metrics as we go and as we learn about COVID across the state,” Baggett said. “There is not a national standard out there.”

Even as the county works to maintain its current Phase 2 status, it also has to prepare to submit an application to potentially move to Phase 3, which could allow for larger public gatherings and more significant activity in restaurants, retailers and certain other businesses. It would also allow the reopening of public offices for government services, as well as libraries and museums.

The requirements for moving to Phase 3 are largely identical to the requirements to Phase 2, with the goal of decreasing or at least maintaining current case numbers as the economy reopens and the risk of new surges increases.

Counties must wait at least three weeks after being approved to move to a new phase before applying for the next phase. By that guideline, for Grant County, the soonest a Phase 3 application could be made is June 13.