Businesses in all eight regions throughout Washington State now can partially open as part of the state’s COVID-19 recovery effort.

The South Central portion of the state including the Tri-Cities was temporarily held back from advancing to Phase 2 of recovery due to an initial miscalculation of improvements made in several health metrics. Once discovered, Governor Inslee announced that the South Central region could join five other regions in allowing limited business across a wide span of businesses.

Regardless of the changes, retailers across the state are limited to business in no more than 25% of store capacity. So far, Inslee has announced a two-phase recovery plan but has said he is not ready to announce what next steps to a more complete recovery would require.

Washington Retail has been encouraging the Governor for further relaxation now that retailers have demonstrated that stores can safely service customers.