Today, Colorado Governor Jared Polis issued a ‘stay at home’ order starting Thursday March 26.
The decision to enact the mandate comes just days after Polis said such an order was unenforceable and not the right direction for the state.
But on Monday and earlier on Wednesday counties in the Denver metro area essentially shut down by each enacting their own stay-at-home orders.
The order is the most significant step Polis has taken as he tries to make a dent in the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. He announced it just minutes after the deaths tied to the coronavirus in Colorado hit at least 19 and the number of confirmed cases ballooned over 1,000.
Polis stated:
“We’re issuing the stay-at-home order to save lives,” he said.
Here in Colorado, we had some of the earliest spread of the Covid virus due to our Ski tourism industry. For awhile, Aspen was a hotspot in the beginning of March. One of the terrible side effects of the ski resorts suddenly closing is that many of the employees of the resorts live on ski company provided housing, and are being evicted by the end of March.
Vail Resort employees told 9Wants to Know the initial request for employees to leave their housing made them feel confused and scrambling for housing. One employee said others were considering renting cars to sleep in.
The ski season ended on March 14. An internal website for employees said Tuesday evening that "if needed, you can remain in housing until March 27."
For local residents who took the ski job, they are suddenly discovering there are no jobs to transition into, or places to suddenly move. For the international ski employees, many of them are unable to leave the country due to travel bans.
Denver and Boulder issued the same order yesterday.
The Denver Stay at home order was through April 10th, but the statewide order will go through April 11th.
These are the other states that have issued state wide ‘stay at home’ orders:
California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana,
Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio,Oregon, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin...for now.