{"id":45833,"date":"2021-07-10T01:42:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-10T07:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-governor-ends-health-emergency-orders-rescinding-many-of-his-executive-actions\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:27:37","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:27:37","slug":"colorado-governor-ends-health-emergency-orders-rescinding-many-of-his-executive-actions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-governor-ends-health-emergency-orders-rescinding-many-of-his-executive-actions\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado governor ends health emergency orders, rescinding many of his executive actions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Colorado
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis speaks at a news conference on COVID-19, the coronavirus, on March 3, 2020.<\/span>Jesse Paul\/The Colorado Sun<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Thursday lifted health emergency orders that have been in effect since COVID-19 arrived in the state, rescinding many of the scores of executive actions that have defined Coloradans\u2019 lives over the past 16 months.<\/p>\n

Polis declared that \u201cthe moment for extraordinary executive action has passed\u201d and that Colorado has \u201creached an important milestone.\u201d<\/p>\n

The move is the latest sign that Colorado is moving past the pandemic, even as the economic effects of the health crisis linger and the dangerous Delta variant rages in the western part of the state, where vaccination rates are low.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we have reached a milestone with over 70% of our state receiving the safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine, we must remain vigilant,\u201d Polis said in a written statement nodding to the fact that COVID-19 isn\u2019t quite in the rearview mirror.<\/p>\n

In rescinding the health emergency orders and giving up much of his broad use of power \u2014 he said \u201cthey are no longer needed\u201d \u2014 Polis signed a new executive order. The \u201crecovery executive order\u201d is aimed at boosting the economic comeback and keeping in place a COVID-19 health safety net by maintaining the state\u2019s access to federal funding.<\/p>\n

Colorado also remains under a disaster emergency declaration, according to Polis\u2019 office, which is what gives him the power to issue the recovery executive order.<\/p>\n

Disaster emergency declarations can remain in place long after the active part of an emergency has passed. There are dozens still in effect in Colorado from events that happened years ago.<\/p>\n

The governor\u2019s decision on Thursday will not affect people\u2019s access to vaccines, and unemployment and rental assistance programs will remain unchanged.<\/p>\n

His executive order giving tenants time to remedy payments with their landlords also remains in effect, as do enhanced federal benefits for those receiving Medicaid and assistance under the Children\u2019s Basic Health Plan.<\/p>\n

Both of those actions were kept in place by the new recovery order, which was described by a top Polis administration official as a refocusing of the coronavirus response and the governor\u2019s broad disaster authority.<\/p>\n

The Colorado National Guard will also remain activated to assist with the state\u2019s pandemic response.<\/p>\n

The Governor\u2019s Expert Emergency Epidemic Response Committee, which has helped Polis make decisions during the pandemic, will be deactivated. Suspended regulations \u2014 like ones related to sick leave for state employees \u2014 are being put back in place.<\/p>\n

The Denver Post was first to report the governor\u2019s decision, which has been anticipated for weeks.<\/p>\n

Polis\u2019 move to rescind his public health emergency order comes a day after he awarded the fifth and final $1 million to an individual as part of the state\u2019s coronavirus vaccine sweepstakes. While the governor called the initiative as a success, vaccination data shows that about 501,000 COVID-19 doses were administered from May 26 to June 26, down 43% from the 1.2 million total vaccines administered in the month before the sweepstakes was announced.<\/p>\n

There have been more than 500,000 coronavirus cases in Colorado since March 2020, when the disease was first detected in the state. More than 30,000 people have been hospitalized because of COVID-19.<\/p>\n

Among people who contracted the coronavirus, 6,824 have died.<\/p>\n

Nearly 3 million Coloradans have been fully immunized against COVID-19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

is the latest sign that Colorado is moving past the pandemic<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[233,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-45833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coloradosun-com","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45833"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86652,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45833\/revisions\/86652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45833"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=45833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}