The Summit County Council is scheduled to meet Thursday afternoon to consider approving an updated Health Order that will recommend staying in the Orange “Moderate-Risk” phase.
This comes while county officials know Governor Gary Herbert is issuing a new Health Order Friday, but they don’t know what the Governor will recommend.
Summit County Health Director Rich Bullough reported to the County Council Wednesday that they are in alignment with Governor Herbert’s “Utah Leads Together” 2.0 program.
But he said that if the Governor’s new Health Order on the 15th calls for the state to move to a Yellow, or “Low-Risk” stage, they want to stay in the Orange stage through the end of May.
Summit County on Tuesday night filed a request with the Governor’s Office for an exemption to carry out their own plan.
Bullough said there are a number of reasons for the request. One is the high numbers that the county saw at the onset of the COVID-19 crisis.
“Out current rate for 100,000 remains extremely high. For the majority of this outbreak, it’s been the highest in the state. During a period of time early on, it was one of the highest in the country. And just recently, we were overtaken by San Juan County. But we remain the second-highest per capita rate in the state of Utah.”
Furthermore, Bullough said they are still incredibly concerned that infections can be brought here by visitors outside of the county or outside the state.
“While Summit County residents and visitors and others have really rallied around the orders that we’ve issued, and have driven our incidence rates, our new cases of COVID, really downward, that all changes when we begin to have people streaming into Summit County. Our transmission rate, the ‘R nought” rate is still favorable, it’s still well below One. But it has bumped up to as high as 0.67. Today it’s 0.5. It seems to be bouncing around.”
Bullough added that they haven’t had the chance to judge the impacts of moving from the Red (or high-risk) phase to Orange, which only occurred with the county’s Health Order of May 1st.
Given the incubation period for the COVID-19 virus, it will take from three to four weeks to gather meaningful data and to judge a trend.
He said that Salt Lake and Wasatch Counties are also deciding to stay in the Orange phase. Bullough said it makes sense to align with their two neighbors, who have the same employee base and the same visitors as Summit County.
County Environmental Health Director Phil Bondurant said the new plan is also more targeted to four economic sectors that are the biggest risks for infection, especially in a resort area.
The sectors are—food; indoor recreation, such as gyms; arts and entertainmen; and hotels and lodging.
“We need to know and understand what the governor feels about this current exemption in place. So, that being said, a new order is going to be simplified in a way that is easier to understand. It doesn’t discredit any of the work that has already been done. But what it does is, makes it a little bit easier for us as we transition through. And in the event that for some reason, we do have to jump from a Yellow back to an Orange for some reason, these orders are much simpler, much easier to understand, and help our business community be more efficient as we transition and provide notification
of the impending transition.”
Deputy County Attorney Dave Thomas said that gatherings of more than 20 people will now be allowed in such categories as grocery stores, retail, churches and construction sites, while restaurants will still be called on to maintain social distancing and limits on tables.
Furthermore, the prohibition on gatherings can be exempted, on a case-by-case basis, on events that are sponsored by a formal organization. Those groups, however, must apply to the county.
“The proposal that the county submitted to the governor last night, for a continuing exemption under Orange, would still have the 20-person limitation for both public and private gatherings. But in cases where there is a formal organization, they could go over the 20 upon application to the Health Department, where they have to show the Health Department a plan, on how they’re going to minimize risk. And if that plan gets approved by the Health Department, then they can conduct that event.”
Deputy County Attorney Dave Thomas
