{"id":49598,"date":"2020-12-31T11:02:05","date_gmt":"2020-12-31T18:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-governor-moves-to-loosen-level-red-coronavirus-restrictions\/"},"modified":"2020-12-31T18:02:05","modified_gmt":"2020-12-31T18:02:05","slug":"colorado-governor-moves-to-loosen-level-red-coronavirus-restrictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-governor-moves-to-loosen-level-red-coronavirus-restrictions\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado governor moves to loosen Level Red coronavirus restrictions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Gov.
Gov. Jared Polis speaks to reporters at a news conference in October.<\/span>Jesse Paul\/The Colorado Sun<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis late Wednesday announced that he will<\/p>\n

The Democrat said he is asking the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to move counties that had been under Level Red restrictions \u2014 including the entire Denver area and El Paso County \u2014 to Level Orange restrictions starting on Monday.<\/p>\n

Under Level Orange restrictions, counties will be able to allow personal gatherings of up to 10 people from two different households and restaurants can offer indoor dining at up to 25% of their capacity or 50 people.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn reviewing the data, Colorado has been in a sustained declined for 13 days<\/a>, and only 73% of (intensive care unit) beds statewide are in use,\u201d Polis said on Twitter in announcing the shift.<\/p>\n

The move, announced on social media hours after he held a news conference earlier in the day, comes even as Colorado this week detected a case of a coronavirus variant that is thought to be as much as 70% more transmissible. The variant has wreaked havoc in the U.K.<\/p>\n

Also, because of the coronavirus\u2019 incubation period and the turnaround time for test results, Colorado health officials have previously said it takes about 10 days to two weeks before infections acquired at a specific time begin showing up in the state\u2019s data. That means the state won\u2019t have a clear picture of whether there is a surge of cases tied to Christmas and New Year\u2019s celebrations before it lowers the restrictions in the counties.<\/p>\n

Finally, the dial system is supposed to be determined by an individual county\u2019s coronavirus situation. This is the second time Polis has changed the dial parameters after he unveiled an alteration in November aimed at preventing lockdowns across the state.<\/p>\n

However, Colorado\u2019s seven-day average of new cases has been declining since Dec. 4. The state\u2019s test positivity rate is at its lowest levels since October. Hospitalizations have steadily dropped since Dec. 1.<\/p>\n

Colorado\u2019s coronavirus situation \u2014 in terms of daily case counts and hospitalizations \u2014 remains perilously above numbers the state saw in the spring when the virus was first detected in Colorado. And the state\u2019s declines come after the worst stretch it has endured since the pandemic began.<\/p>\n

Polis and his health deputies have pleaded with the public to adhere to social-distancing and mask-wearing guidelines. The governor doubled down on those requests Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo save lives, maybe even your own, it is more important than ever that Coloradans not gather outside of their household to celebrate the New Year, and to continue to take the basic steps to protect themselves and other,\u201d Polis said Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

Read more at The Colorado Sun<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, journalist-owned news outlet exploring issues of statewide interest. Sign up for a newsletter and read more at coloradosun.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more at The Colorado Sun<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democrat says he is asking health department to lower red counties to orange<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[233,685,13,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-49598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coloradosun-com","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49598","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=49598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49598"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=49598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}