Denver’s stay-at-home order will be extended to May 8

Mayor Michael Hancock will extend Denver’s stay-at-home order to May 8, even as much of the rest of the state will begin to see a relaxation next week of similar restrictions that had been designed to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Other parts of the metro area are expected to follow Hancock’s lead.

Hancock first issued his order March 23 and later extended it to April 30, but without additional guidance from Gov. Jared Polis’s office on how to enforce less-stringent guidelines, the city needs additional time to figure out how more and more Denverites can safely leave their homes, spokeswoman Theresa Marchetta said.

Polis announced this week that the statewide stay-at-home order will expire Sunday, with Colorado shifting to a second response phase he dubbed “safer at home” — which will begin with some business activities being allowed to resume Monday and additional relaxing of restrictions into May.

However, the specifics behind that shift have not been communicated sufficiently to Denver officials, who need time to figure out how police, code enforcement and more can safely and appropriately enact the change, Marchetta said. The governor is expected to offer more detail in a new executive order on Sunday.

“We want to align with the state but we don’t have the language from the state, so once we do get it we’ll need time,” Marchetta said. “We can’t just get it on the 26th and flip a switch.”

Hancock will formally announce his decision — which was first reported by Denverite — on Friday morning.

Residents and businesses simply need additional time to prepare for the next phase, Hancock said Thursday evening on Twitter.

— Michael B. Hancock (@MayorHancock) April 24, 2020

“Extending our stay-at-home order will give us more time to do the things necessary for our community to re-open safely & in stages,” he wrote.

In addition, in the coming weeks and months, testing will be an increasingly important factor to help ensure the relaxed orders aren’t exposing more and more residents to the coronavirus, officials have said.

And currently not as many people in Denver are being tested as public health officials would like.

Public Health Director Bob McDonald said Monday that he’d like to see as many as 1,000 tests conducted a day in Denver, if not more, and those numbers are currently somewhere in the hundreds.

Other public health departments and officials in the metropolitan area will follow suit by extending their stay-at-home orders as well, Marchetta said.

The Tri-County Health Department said in a news release that its officials — who represent Adams, Arapahoe and Douglas counties — also are considering a similar extension and will make a decision by Sunday.

“We are studying current trends and will be reviewing the need to extend the stay-at-home order for two weeks until May 8th for specific locations that are still experiencing high numbers of people sick with COVID-19,” the news release said.

For weeks, local and national public officials have heard the increasing cries to reopen the state. Hundreds flocked to the Colorado Capitol on Sunday to protest the stay-at-home orders, with some arguing the economic damage caused by the closures is far worse than the illnesses and deaths caused by the virus.

As of Thursday, Colorado had 11,262 confirmed and suspected cases of the virus and 552 reported deaths, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

Officials have taken care to phrase the relaxation of the the state’s stay-at-home order as a slight change rather than a sudden one. Even though the order is being lifted soon, most people should still remain at home to curb additional transmission of the virus, Polis has said.

In a best-case scenario, Denver’s restrictions could be lifted over the next two-to-four months, however officials have said the city is trending toward a longer haul than that.

And even when restrictions are more fully relaxed, social distancing measures likely will remain in place much longer, Hancock and others have said.

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