{"id":89597,"date":"2020-04-03T00:31:40","date_gmt":"2020-04-03T06:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/polis-extends-order-closing-schools-will-address-stay-at-home-extension\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T05:02:37","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T11:02:37","slug":"polis-extends-order-closing-schools-will-address-stay-at-home-extension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/polis-extends-order-closing-schools-will-address-stay-at-home-extension\/","title":{"rendered":"Polis extends order closing schools, will address stay-at-home extension"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Kindergarten
Kindergarten teacher Katie Hoiland holds a reading intervention session Jan. 23, 2019, with kindergarteners at Aragon Elementary in Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8.<\/span>Mark Reis\/Special to The Colorado Sun<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

CENTENNIAL \u2013 Gov. Jared Polis on Wednesday said all Colorado schools will be closed to in-person learning until at least April 30, extending an earlier order by about a week.<\/p>\n

The initial order, announced on March 18, was to expire on April 17.<\/p>\n

Polis said the extension is needed to continue to delay when COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, peaks in Colorado. This will allow hospitals to prepare for a surge in patients.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, we simply don\u2019t have the medical capacity \u2013 the hospital beds, the ICU units, the ventilators,\u201d Polis said at a news conference at the state\u2019s emergency operations center in Centennial.<\/p>\n

There are about 3,300 confirmed coronavirus cases in Colorado, though officials warn there are likely many times more that infected with the disease. At least 77 deaths have been attributed to the outbreak.<\/p>\n

More than 600 people are hospitalized with the disease. State officials said Wednesday they are looking at patient numbers to peak between sometime in April and July.<\/p>\n

Polis said he would wait to decide whether to extend his stay-at-home order, which was issued last week and is set to expire on April 11. He said, however, that it\u2019s likely to be extended, though he hopes it doesn\u2019t have to be in effect until April 30.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are going to look at the science and data in real time to see when that can roll off,\u201d Polis said. \u201cIt\u2019s not a call we are going to make on April 1.\u201d<\/p>\n

Polis added: \u201cIt\u2019s all about when we can provide the maximum degree of flexibility and economic activity at the minimum risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Denver on Tuesday extended its stay-at-home order for the city until April 30, again taking more restrictive measures before the state. Mayor Michael Hancock announced a stay-at-home order for Denver two days before Polis decided to take action statewide.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump on Monday extended social distancing guidelines for the nation to April 30, abandoning his push to have the country functioning as normal by April 12, Easter Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody wants to get back a semblance of normalcy and jumpstart our economy more than you do and more than I do,\u201d Polis said.<\/p>\n

Colorado ramping up treatment space<\/div>\n

Scott Bookman, Colorado\u2019s coronavirus incident commander, joined Polis at Tuesday\u2019s news conference and laid out a set of goals to quickly ramp up patient capacity.<\/p>\n

Those goals include:<\/p>\n

Freeing up 5,000 in-hospital beds for use by the most critically ill patients \u2013 those who need ventilators and dialysis \u2013 by April 18<\/em>Setting up ambulatory surgical centers, freestanding emergency departments and critical access hospitals to handle patients who need intravenous fluids and medicine, and respiratory therapy<\/em>Building 2,000 beds in arenas, convention centers, stadiums and warehouses for patients who need medical monitoring but not necessarily more intensive care by April 18<\/em>Building 10,000 beds in hotels, dorms and skilled nursing facilities for asymptomatic people requiring quarantine, such as people experiencing homelessness, by May 15.<\/em>\u201cWe have set some wildly important goals,\u201d Bookman said.<\/p>\n

Polis said the state is working directly with manufacturers in China to try to procure more personal protective equipment. He says the federal government has only supplied a fraction of the state\u2019s requests.<\/p>\n

The governor said he even explored sending a jumbo jet with state officials on it to pick up the goods.<\/p>\n

The state has also ordered 750 ventilators to help fill its need gap, which the governor has said is in the thousands.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt this point in the crisis, personal protective equipment equals lives,\u201d Polis said. \u201cVentilators equals lives.\u201d<\/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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Governor says online learning will help slow spread of COVID-19<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":89598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[685,21,155,819,28,29,668],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-89597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-cortez","tag-education","tag-gov-jared-polis","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-public-health"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89597","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=89597"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89601,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89597\/revisions\/89601"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89597"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=89597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}