Polis outlines plan to reopen Colorado businesses with social distancing still in place

DENVER — Gov. Jared Polis said non-essential businesses may have to reopen in a few weeks with social distancing measures still in place as part of a larger plan to slowly reintegrate the state into a post-stay-at-home era while controlling the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

In a press conference Wednesday, Polis said the state is still in the first phase of a plan to fight the novel coronavirus, which focuses on suppressing the spread of the virus through stay-at-home measures and to build out medical capacity to handle a surge of patients.

In the coming weeks, the goal is to reach what he called the “stabilization” period, which continues to ban large gatherings and emphasizes more widespread testing and contract tracing to determine positive COVID-19 patients.

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That is tentatively set for April 26, the tentative end date of Polis’ statewide stay-at-home order.

For in-person businesses like restaurants, Polis said they will have to maintain social distancing by spacing out workers and customers, installing plexiglass barriers, staggering shifts of workers and continuing to encourage telework when possible.

The approach is a cautious one, as policy discussions in Washington increasingly shift away from expanding access to coronavirus tests, personal protective gear and hospital capacity and toward stemming the deep economic reverberations created by millions of layoffs from non-essential businesses that can’t have employees telecommute.

But Polis argued a controlled restart to life as Colorado knew it just a month and a half ago is necessary to prevent a surge in cases, and that slow restart may become a part of life for months to come.

“As we reopen our state, we know that things will work differently than they did before, and we must enshrine social distancing in the way we live, work, and play in a sustainable way for a matter of months,” Polis said.