D.C Mayor Muriel Bowser and Health Director LaQuandra Nesbitt celebrated the city’s declining case counts at a press conference on Monday.

Luis M. Alvarez / AP

The District has hit a two-and-a-half-month high for a key metric officials are using to help determine the city’s reopening plans. According to data reported by the D.C. Department of Health on Monday, community spread reached a peak of 83 on Aug. 3, the highest it’s been since May 28.

Community spread measures the number of COVID-19 cases according to the date of symptom onset and has been a helpful tool in figuring out how the virus is progressing through the city. The metric, which does not include patients at nursing homes, homeless shelters or the D.C. Jail, has been a point of contention in recent months as the city has moved forward with reopening plans, despite not meeting its goals.

Of the metrics on D.C.’s official reopening tracker, two other thresholds haven’t been met in order to move into Phase 3: a sustained low transmission rate, and percentage of new cases from quarantine contacts. The data has continued to show that most cases in the District are not being transmitted among close contacts, showing officials that a concerning number of people who are infected with the virus are still traveling outside the home and spreading the virus.

At a press briefing Monday, Mayor Muriel Bowser and D.C. Health Director LaQuandra Nesbitt addressed these concerns and released data from recent contact tracing efforts.

In data produced over the past two weeks, 145 out of 971 positive cases said they attended a “large event,” characterized as having five or more people. Of those people, 90% went to gatherings with fewer than 50 people, which adheres to the city’s current guidelines.

More than 60% reported that at least part of the events were indoors. These “events” included gatherings at places of worship, cookouts and parties. Most people reported that at some point during the gatherings, social distancing was not maintained. Another 102 people said they had traveled during the “exposure period” (the two-week span before they had symptoms or were tested.)

With D.C.’s Restaurant Week kicking off, many have raised concerns about how reopened restaurants might be causing outbreaks. In a briefing early this month, Nesbitt said an “increasing number” of individuals with COVID-19 have dined indoors at local restaurants.

But during Monday’s press briefing, Nesbitt expressed frustration when reporters asked about whether the city officials would add restrictions on indoor dining if the data proves it’s necessary.

“If the data would suggest that we were there, we would be making that recommendation,” Nesbitt said. “We know indoor dining is high risk. We have people indoor dining in the District. I’m still seeing a higher proportion of my cases related to the workplace or travel, and not attributed to indoor dining.”

Specifically, Nesbitt says about 5% to 8% of cases are connected to people eating out.

“I’m having a very difficult time,” Nesbitt said. “I’m getting asked by [the] Council and I’m getting asked in this room all the time, ‘When are you going to close indoor dining?’ That’s essentially the question. I can’t make the data tell me to tell you that 30% to 40% of my cases are related to it. That’s just not the case.”

Nesbitt’s presentation also included case studies to provide examples of how some people in the District have contracted coronavirus. These included a woman in her 20s who had dinner with her friends; four friends who traveled to Los Angeles for the 4th of July holiday weekend; and a small birthday gathering that seemed “very innocent” at first, but ended up affecting three separate households.

“Mild symptoms are still symptoms of COVID-19. And when you have these mild symptoms and you have planned social engagements, you need to cancel those plans,” Nesbitt added.

As of Monday, D.C. has reported 13,273 positive cases and 597 deaths related to coronavirus.

This story has been updated to clarify language about community spread.

Filed Under: coronavirus, covid-19, dc health, Health Hub,