Mesa County May Fully Re-Open Next Month
As vaccines are becoming more readily available in Colorado, Mesa County is planning to reopen completely with no pushback from the state in mid-April, 2021.
The plan didn't seem as optimistic when initially set forth, as the county which includes Grand Junction, as well as many other western Colorado towns, was expecting to receive some push-back from the state and the state's Governor, Jared Polis, against the idea of completely reopening.
However, it would appear that Governor Polis isn't planning on fighting back against Mesa County's plan to completely reopen roughly a month from now.
Polis is allegedly planning to announce major changes to the current state of affairs in Colorado with regard to COVID-19 and the shutdowns next week, including changes to public health guidelines and who, in fact, is able to make the decisions with regard to said guidelines.
Polis had this to say about the situation:
The default will be going to the county level relatively soon, in the next few weeks. That’s because the state’s nexus in this is, our emergency is preventing hospitals from exceeding capacity, and we’ve done that successfully. As long as counties are not exceeding their hospital capacity with COVID patients and non-COVID patients in need of hospitalization and dying needlessly, we encourage that kind of flexibility at the county level.
Businesses in Mesa County will likely be able to decide for themselves which guidelines to put into place as of mid-April, which include things like social distancing and mask-wearing rules. We will likely know more about what Mesa County's guidelines will look like in the near future.