D.C. officials are laying the groundwork to announce on Wednesday that the city will start a first phase of reopening on Friday, May 29, provided there isn’t a last-minute midweek spike in COVID-19 cases, said John Falcicchio, deputy mayor for planning and economic development and the mayor’s chief of staff.

If D.C. avoids such a rise in cases, it could well join Northern Virginia and even some of the suburban counties in Maryland this week in gingerly easing the two-month lockdown imposed by the pandemic.

The possible announcement on Wednesday would be accompanied by specific guidance from Mayor Muriel Bowser on how certain businesses, notably restaurants, will be able to reopen. A mayoral order formalizing rules for what the first phase of reopening will look like is currently being drafted, senior city officials say, based largely on recommendations released last week by Bowser’s ReOpen D.C. Advisory Group.

But any formal announcement by Bowser still hinges on COVID-19 cases trending downward for one more day, so the city can meet a key metric of a 14-day sustained decline in the community spread of the virus. That 14th day should have come last Sunday, but a late-week spike of cases set the city back three days in its count.

Addressing some of the confusion around the metrics D.C. is using to decide when to start reopening — which include hospital capacity, the rate of transmission of the virus, and testing and contact tracing capabilities — Bowser said Tuesday that she was following the science and had no intention of bending data to meet a predetermined goal.

“I can tell you we have no interest in cooking the books,” she said. “We have put out proactively a lot of information on a daily basis and we will continue to do that.”

The most contentious data point has revolved around the 14-day decline in cases. That decline isn’t measured by the daily count of positive COVID cases, but rather when those people started showing symptoms — which is often days before they are tested. Additionally, positive cases in congregate settings such as the D.C. Jail, nursing homes and homeless shelters are excluded from consideration, under the logic that those individuals don’t circulate as freely in the community. (We have a longer explanation on this here.)

Last week’s one-day spike in cases interrupted the march toward the 14-day decline, but it didn’t fully restart the clock. And city officials say that’s because the spike was relatively small, and below a threshold that would have sent D.C. back to Day 0.

Still, when asked by reporters on Tuesday, Bowser declined to make the data on community spread publicly available, saying regular fluctuations could cause confusion. She also said that the 14-day decline in cases doesn’t foreclose there being spikes after the city starts reopening.

“The 14 days are established as a metric to suggest that if there is an increase in the next phase, all of our systems would be able to accommodate that [increase],” she said. “It’s a shorthand, and we think it’s a good shorthand.”

And senior Bowser aides pushed back on claims that she’s rushing to reopen even if the city isn’t ready for it.

“We’ve been very prudent in our approach to reopening. Never has the mayor said that she wanted to reopen despite what the metrics said. We’ve been clear we have a set of metrics and this is what we’re judging against whether we’re ready to reopen,” said Falcicchio.

Bowser also announced other steps she’s taking to ensure that D.C.’s reopening can proceed as planned, including a new testing site in downtown D.C. that will open next Monday; the onboarding of new contact tracers to hunt down and contain new infections when they happen; and the delivery of large quantities of hand sanitizer, masks and cleaning supplies to business improvement districts and neighborhood-based business associations.

If Phase 1 of reopening does kick off on Friday, the loosening of restrictions will be very gradual. Restaurants will be able to offer limited outdoor service, in-person worship services could begin with no more than 10 people at a time, and some libraries could start offering curbside service. And while parks, fields, tennis courts, and golf courses would reopen, playgrounds, pools, gyms, museums, and summer camps would remain closed.