Minnesota on lockdown
https://m.startribune.com/gov-tim-walz-tells-minnesotans-stay-home-amid-coronavirus-outbreak/569095212/
Starts Friday at midnight. Listening to local news.
Gov. Tim Walz issued an executive order Wednesday asking Minnesotans to stay in their homes unless absolutely necessary, his most dramatic executive action to date to try and slow the growing coronavirus pandemic across the state.
The “stay-at-home” order, beginning at midnight Friday, is based on models developed by the Minnesota Department of Health and the University of Minnesota that suggest that the state will run out of hospital intensive care capacity before infection rates peak — leaving many Minnesotans at greater risk of death from COVID-19.
“What our objective is now is to move the infection rate or slow it down and buy time,” the governor said Wednesday, adding that “the place we cannot got to is when someone cannot get that ICU care.”
Lasting at least two weeks, it is meant as an extreme form of social distancing that aims to keep people inside their homes as much as possible and suspend large gatherings of any kind. Walz has already ordered schools, restaurants, bars, movie theaters and other public spaces to close their doors. His latest action is intended to bolster the orders he’s already delivered and ask Minnesotans to further limit their social interactions.
Bars and restaurants will continue to be closed through May 1, subject to extension. Schools will stay closed until May 4. Local governments will have authority to decide on what employees are essential. Clinics, grocery stores, gas stations and liquor stores remain open.
What you need to know about Minnesota’s ‘stay-at-home’ order
Read Gov. Tim Walz's COVID-19 'stay at home' order
And while a few states have closed abortion clinics as “nonessential” services, Walz specifically mentioned clinics providing reproductive healthcare as essential services allowed to stay open.
After two weeks, the governor said he hopes to scale back to more moderate social distancing measures for all Minnesotans for another three weeks. Then those measures would only be enforced for people at greatest risk of COVID-19 complications — mostly people who are elderly or have other health problems.
Quarantined in his home after being exposed to someone with COVID-19, Walz delivered the news on a livestream video to Minnesotans.
From New York to California — and including neighboring Wisconsin — a growing number of governors and local leaders are turning to these orders to slow the spread of the virus. But the latest order from the governor is far from a total lockdown in the state.
People are still allowed to go places such as the grocery store, gas station and the doctor, and residents will be allowed to get outside for exercise, to walk their dog or go on a hike with appropriate social distancing.
The orders across the U.S. haven’t come with strict enforcement, unlike some European countries hit hard by the virus, where residents can be fined if they are outside of their home for nonessential services.
Health experts say extreme social distancing measures have proved effective in places like China, where limitations on travel and going outdoors helped slow the spread of the virus. It also allowed officials to focus medical and other resources on Wuhan, the epicenter of China’s outbreak.
Walz has said he would make the call about a shelter-in-place order if the data showed it would be necessary to help hospitals handle the expected number of patients coming in. He’s also said any order, to be effective, would have to last weeks or even months.
But there’s plenty of skepticism about these orders. This week, President Donald Trump said he hoped the country would be back open for business and “raring” to go by Easter on April 12, and state Republican senators representing greater Minnesota have chafed against the bar and restaurant closings, arguing they might not be able to survive weeks or months of closure.
On Wednesday, former Republican Rep. Jason Lewis, who is now running for the Senate against DFLer Tina Smith, said businesses should reopen as soon as Monday for “all but the most vulnerable of its residents.”