{"id":2455862,"date":"2020-03-16T16:05:33","date_gmt":"2020-03-16T22:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=322739"},"modified":"2020-03-16T16:05:33","modified_gmt":"2020-03-16T22:05:33","slug":"summit-county-orders-widespread-business-closures-to-help-contain-covid-19-spread","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/summit-county-orders-widespread-business-closures-to-help-contain-covid-19-spread\/","title":{"rendered":"Summit County orders widespread business closures to help contain COVID-19 spread"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Summit County Environmental Health Manager Dan Hendershott speaks at a press conference on Thursday evening, March 5, at the County Commons Building in Frisco, to discuss the newly confirmed case of COVID-19. The visitor who tested positive for coronavirus had been skiing at Keystone and Vail resorts before being treated at St. Anthony Medical Center.<\/strong>
Liz Copan \/ ecopan@summitdaily.com | Summit Daily News<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

DILLON \u2014 Summit County officials issued a public health order Monday afternoon, announcing sweeping business closures throughout the area to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19. The order will include all municipalities and according to the county, the closures will last indefinitely.<\/p>\n

Only banks, grocery stores, liquor stores, marijuana dispensaries, pharmacies and gas stations will remain open.<\/p>\n

According to a statement from the county, dine-in activity in all restaurants, bars and cafeterias in Summit County will be prohibited beginning at 10 p.m. Monday. Restaurants will be allowed to continue providing delivery and take-out options. <\/p>\n

\u201cOur restaurant owners and their employees work hard every day to ensure food safety for their customers by practicing good handwashing, preventing cross contamination and excluding sick employees,\u201d Summit County Public Health Director Amy Wineland said in a news release that confirmed the order to close. \u201cDuring this COVID-19 response, they are working even harder to ensure that the food they produce is safe. Because the primary mode of COVID-19 transmission is person-to-person \u2014 not through the preparation, service and consumption of food \u2014 we believe that take-out and delivery services pose very low risk to the public and serve a critical need in the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, the Summit Stage and Breckenridge Free Ride bus services will be suspended at the end of service Monday and will not resume until further notice. Ride share services will be permitted to operate until 11:59 p.m. Monday, and service will be suspended afterward. All shuttle services will be allowed to operate until noon Thursday, though county officials are emphasizing that such services should only be used for transporting visitors out of the county or residents back to the area.<\/p>\n

All retail businesses that see foot traffic from the general public also will be required to close effective 10 p.m. Monday. All lodging businesses \u2014 including hotels, motels, timeshares and short-term rentals \u2014 are required to be closed by noon Thursday.<\/p>\n

According to the county, the closures will last indefinitely, meaning the length of the closure is undetermined. As of Monday, Summit County has had two positive cases of COVID-19. The first is still in isolation in the Denver area. The second is in isolation in Frisco. Forty-seven Summit County residents and visitors have been tested. So far, 11 have tested negative, two have tested positive and 34 are still pending.<\/p>\n

With the closures<\/a>, Summit County joins a number of other communities around the country making changes to business practices in response to the disease \u2014 including statewide closures in California, Illinois, Ohio and more. Breckenridge Town Manager Rock Holman noted that the county\u2019s new restrictions were modeled after similar efforts in Gunnison and Crested Butte.<\/p>\n

For business owners, even if the move seems to make sense, the news is still disappointing.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou really can\u2019t do social distancing in a restaurant,\u201d said Jimmy Walker, head brewer at Breckenridge Brewery and Pub, which closed down preemptively Sunday because of the disease. \u201cYou\u2019re touching too many credit cards and people and pens and money. You\u2019re always close to people \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cI finished the brew-day watching people make their way down the south end of Breckenridge, and it was heartbreaking to have to turn them all away. You think of all the visitors and people on vacation. We\u2019re in the service industry, but we\u2019re here to make people happy. It\u2019s tough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taylor Sienkiewicz contributed in reporting this story<\/em>.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summit County Environmental Health Manager Dan Hendershott speaks at a press conference on Thursday evening, March 5, at the County Commons Building in Frisco, to discuss the newly confirmed case of COVID-19. The visitor who tested positive for coronavirus had been skiing at Keystone and Vail resorts before being treated at St. Anthony Medical Center.Liz […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2455862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 10:12:47","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2455862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2455862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2455862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2455862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}