A stay-at-home order that takes effect Thursday at midnight prohibits Summit County residents to leave their homes for non-essential reasons until May 1. The order is meant to stop the spread of COVID-19 and prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed.
Summit County Council member Roger Armstrong says the Park City Hospital is not equipped to handle the number of COVID-19 cases expected. With Thursday’s count of 103 confirmed cases, it’s the highest per capita in the state and compares with Italy and New York. Summit county has the highest number of confirmed cases of all mountain resort communities in the country.
“This is a massive public health crisis. It risks killing a substantial number of people. We have a community here that has a relatively older population to a large extent, but I think that the overwhelming push for the council was the impact on our health care system. We heard quite clearly from our public health officer that there are models that are showing the Salt Lake City hospitals in their health care system will be at capacity in less than three weeks and our health care facilities here in the County will be at capacity in a faster."
Armstrong doesn’t rule out more restrictive orders if residents don’t comply with the public health order to stay at home. The 13-page order outlines restrictions and allowances. People may leave their homes for essential activities, essential government functions, essential travel or to operate essential business. Outdoor activities are not restricted under this new order, but social distancing must be observed. Liquor stores will remain open noon to 7 PM, Monday through Saturday. Bike shops are allowed to be open for limited services according to the Summit County Attorney’s office.
Armstrong is concerned about conflicting messages from national news and the federal government and he urges Summit County residents to use the information that comes directly from the public health department.
"The problem is we’re seeing information being distributed at the national level that's conflicting. We've got other states, we've got a disagreement among states as to how to approach the virus and how to stop it and it leads to conflicting opinions within our own county. So, what I would ask is that our residents trust our health officials trust the information is being disseminated from inside the department's here and coordinate their behaviors accordingly so that we can get past this as quickly as possible."
The county council sent a letter to Governor Herbert requesting an emergency suspension of the laws concerning how the county spends the TRT (Transient Room Tax) and RAP tax (Recreation, Arts and Parks).
We didn't get into great detail about what we might use it for I think at this point the County is looking at a variety of sources again our job is to protect human health and safety and economic well-being follows that so I think whatever we can do as much flexibility as we can get out of that would be great but it will be up to the governor.”
A linkto Summit County’s Stay-at-Home Joint Public Health Order can be found here.
