The Knox County Health Department will begin discussing plans for phase three of reopening next week.

Charity Menefee of KCHD reports that the county is hitting most of the benchmarks laid out in the reopening plan, but that the health department is keeping a close eye on certain numbers.

“Right now, a lot of them (benchmarks) are doing well,” said Menefee. “The new cases we are concerned about, but we hope that they level off and they stay at a manageable level. We’ll have those discussions (about phase three) next week.”

Knox County has seen a statistically significant increase in cases over the last week and a half. Menefee attributes those cases to multiple factors including more people venturing out of their houses as well as an increase in overall testing.