Washington County Approved to Start Reopening June 1

Only Multnomah County has not officially applied for reopening, though county officials target June 12.

A McMenamins window in Clackamas County. (Alex Wittwer)

Two of the three largest counties in the Portland metro area have Oregon Gov. Kate Brown's blessing to reopen. Washington County is now officially approved to begin reopening Monday, June 1.

That means salons, restaurant dining rooms and bars can open back up, with new restrictions to limit the spread of COVID-19, including a requirement that workers wear masks.

Washington County meets all the state's criteria for reopening. It falls short of one of the state's additional criteria for monitoring transmission: 36 percent of cases there cannot be traced to an known source. (The state's target is 30 percent or less.)

That leaves Multnomah County as the only one of the three Portland-area counties that hasn't officially applied for reopening. But Multnomah County officials announced yesterday they would target June 12 as the date to reopen.

The lifting of stay-home orders is occurring even as the state announced 41 new cases in Multnomah County. Many of them were traced to an outbreak at the berry picking and processing hub of Townsend Farms—which has locations in Fairview and Cornelius, as WW reported earlier today.

Interestingly, Clackamas County, which opened last week, no longer meets the state's prerequisites for reopening because of a rise in cases, according to the Oregon Health Authority website. It's not yet clear what that means for businesses in Clackamas County.

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