Salt Lake County extends stay-at-home order
Apr 9, 2020, 11:12 AM | Updated: 5:56 pm
Salt Lake County Stay Safe Stay Home order. Credit Salt Lake County
SALT LAKE CITY– Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson announced Thursday that the county will be extending it’s “Stay Safe, Stay Home” order until May 1.
During a briefing on Thursday Wilson says that there will be no new additions to the current stay at home order issued by the county other than that they will be extending it over the next two weeks.
Wilson says that she has been grateful to residents for abiding by the current stay at home order and says that the next two weeks will be important. She says they’re looking to the day when they can slowly reopen some businesses to bring things back to normal, but, it won’t be happening soon.
“We don’t see that that’s imminent, but, we do work towards that and are planning towards that,” she says. “We have to stay at it, any slip will slow us down and we need to move forward,” she said during a video briefing on Thursday.
Wilson says that the county has four major areas of focus as they continue to fight the coronavirus:
- Continued decline of cases and hospitalizations
- Hospitals in SLCo are safely able to treat all patients without resorting to crisis standards of care
- We are able to test all people with COVID-19 symptoms
- We are able to conduct active monitoring of confirmed cases and their contacts
Social Distancing
David Schuld, Intelligence Section Chief for Salt Lake County, said the social distancing procedures put in place are working.
Schuld said Salt Lake County currently has 832 confirmed case of COVID-19, but that number could have been much higher if the county hadn’t been socially distancing. He estimates the county would have between 1,490 and 2,230 confirmed cases by now, had we not kept our distance.
“The next two weeks are critical, please help us, your friends, your family, and your community by continuing to social distance,” Schuld said.
Referencing projections made by the Health Department, he said today’s number could have been hit as early as two weeks ago, March 25th, and if current social distancing practices aren’t adhered to the number of cases could be dramatically higher.
Testing
Gary Edwards, director of the Salt Lake County Health Department said they have yet to max out the number of tests that can be performed daily and urged anyone who was showing signs to get tested.
Edwards also urged residents to be wearing cloth face coverings when in public and not to hold any Easter gatherings over the weekend.
