Vice Admiral Raquel Bono’s retirement didn’t last long.

She answered Gov. Jay Inslee’s literal phone call in late March to manage Washington state’s health care system in the midst of a pandemic. She had retired as director of the Defense Health Agency seven months earlier, capping a 36-year military career.

On a trip to Eastern Washington this week, she said she was impressed with how local communities were handling the increase in COVID-19 cases in recent weeks.

Bono was in Ellensburg and Yakima on Thursday, and she toured Spokane hospitals on Friday.

She acknowledged that the health care system in Eastern Washington differs from the West Side of the state, where there are fewer rural communities and population density is much higher, but she also said COVID-19’s relatively late arrival on the east side of the Cascades likely helped the health care system prepare.

“Your numbers right now as a region kind of lag behind what we saw in Western Washington, but they are not as high and part of what I am hearing and observing is that you here had an opportunity to learn from Western Washington, which may be a part of what we’re seeing here,” Bono told reporters Friday.

Spokane County added five new cases and had no new deaths on Friday, bringing the total to 251 confirmed cases and 14 deaths. Twenty people are hospitalized locally with the respiratory virus.

Yakima County has 447 confirmed cases with 19 deaths, and the Tri-Cities area has 341 cases with 26 deaths. There are more than 1,200 confirmed cases in Eastern Washington.

Both local health officials and Gov. Jay Inslee asked Washington residents to adhere to the “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” order despite a sunny forecast for the weekend and the onset of spring. Mayors of tourist towns asked people to stay away during the governor’s press conference Friday.

“Don’t come to Grays Harbor County, where we are struggling and have limited resources,” said Crystal Dingler, mayor of Ocean Shores, noting that hotels and rental properties are all closed to discourage visitors.

The governor asked residents not to congregate outdoors and to stay in their neighborhoods if they go outdoors.

Jeff Lambert, executive director of Dishman Hills Conservancy, said its trails and parks are open, but suggested that adventures outside of one’s neighborhood can wait.

“We’re concerned about congestion,” he said. Adding that, “If the parking lot is full, go elsewhere.”

The governor showed models from the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation that suggest that deaths per day will begin to fall in April statewide if physical distancing measures are followed. Other models showed a rebound in those numbers after an initial fall if mitigation strategies were loosened in mid-April.

So what needs to happen to get society back to normal? The governor’s stay-home order lasts through May 4, but between then and now state leaders are hoping to see a significant increase in testing.

“The reality of our ability to be more effective in handling this pandemic is to have very broad testing available, but we’re just not there,” Bono said Friday.

Testing is needed in addition to robust contact tracing, which enables health officials to know exactly who has been exposed.

“One of the things we’re looking at is how much stability do we see in our own ability to identify that there’s been an infection, and then be able to trace who they might have contacted and what’s the likelihood of another hot spot occurring?” Bono said. “We’re not quite there yet.”

Through both state efforts and partnering with the private sector, Bono echoed the governor’s desire to increase testing capacity. And while the governor acknowledged thousands of more testing kits sent out this week, it is still not enough.

“We need to build a whole manufacturing system that does not depend on imports around the world,” Inslee said, advocating for domestic production of the materials needed to collect samples for COVID-19 tests.

The majority of testing capacity in the United States lies in the private sector, according to the U.S. Surgeon General.

Beyond testing, decreasing case numbers for at least two weeks would be a sign that the state could slowly look to reopen, Bono said, referencing a four-phase plan from Scott Gottlieb, former U.S. Food and Drug Adminstration director. That plan outlines several actions the state is attempting to take like building up personal protective equipment stockpiles, scaling up testing, contact tracing and ensuring hospital capacity.

Washington state currently has 9,887 confirmed cases in all counties, except Garfield County, and 475 residents have died of the virus. There are 649 people hospitalized with COVID-19, with 191 patients in intensive care units statewide.

Bono remained guarded in her optimism about how well Washington is doing to combat COVID-19, despite the state sending away the military field hospital set up at Century Link Field in Seattle.

“We’ve been playing catch up with the virus for some time now. I hope that holds. We have to continue our efforts to ensure that we keep that” pace, she said.