COLORADO, USA — Colorado's COVID-19 dial will soon go from a mandated tool to a simple guide for counties and cities to use.
On April 16, the framework used to measure a county's "openness" will be considered an advisory.
Governor Polis said in a news conference on Friday it is now up to cities and counties to tweak the dial to fit their area's current COVID-19 situation.
9NEWS reached out to some of the area's counties to see if they are considering creating their own dial.
Tri-County
On Thursday, the Tri-County Health Department’s Board of Health passed a public health order that would extend the use of a simplified dial for 30 days once the state's dial expires on April 16th.
Tri-County covers Adams, Arapahoe and Douglas County. The dial would allow the counties to move down one step to less restrictive limits on business capacity.
The dial would also allow any county the Tri-County Health Department covers to open out of the dial system.
Arapahoe County told 9NEWS they plan to discuss their options at an upcoming meeting on Monday and they will not be making any decisions until after that.
Douglas County has directed its staff to draft a resolution to opt-out of the Tri-County Health Department public health order. In a statement, county commissioners said:
“Douglas County will remain guided by accurate public health data, including high vaccination rates of vulnerable populations, coupled with low hospitalizations and deaths.
These science-driven metrics balanced against job losses, business closures, and mental health consequences require that we exercise our local control authority on behalf of the people of Douglas County.
We trust our citizens and businesses to think and act for themselves to protect their lives and livelihoods. In lieu of further orders, we will continue to encourage strong public health recommendations, good hygiene, and the choice to be vaccinated.
Our Board will remain nimble and continue to monitor COVID-19 data trends daily, with the intent to collaborate with the State and Tri-County Health Department on prudent, science-based responses to those trends which best serve our citizens.”
Summit County
Summit County has proposed its own version of a dial system as well. The county manager, Scott Vargo, said the dial would be tailored toward some of the issues they have seen locally.
The proposed tool would relax some restrictions and make it easier for them to move up and down the dial.
Vargo said despite their vaccination rate being one of the top in the state, they still need to create measures to keep people safe.
"It's super important especially in some of these resort communities," he said. "So we've seen higher incident rates, we've seen higher activity levels, we've got concerns about the spread of variants and the impacts that they might have."
Jefferson County
In a statement, Jefferson County officials said they would plan to extend CDPHE's Dial framework for a short period of time to ease out of restriction.
"Under this new local public health order, businesses, schools and residents will be able to operate under Dial 3.0 Level Blue, one level below our current Dial 3.0 status, through mid-May," a statement from their communications office read.
"The Colorado School of Public Health Modeling Team advising the Governor has concluded that delaying policy changes in Colorado until mid-May will prevent large numbers of deaths and hospitalizations.
"Maintaining Dial 3.0 Level Blue restrictions in Jeffco for one additional month will allow our community to stay safer as we work to get our current increase in COVID-19 transmission back under control, get more residents vaccinated and let our local businesses plan for the next several weeks using Level Blue capacity limits and requirements. We will share more information as soon as it is available."
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