Stay At Home Orders in the US

 

 

Millions of U.S. residents are now under some sort of stay-at-home order in response to the Covid 19 pandemic.  There are now over 500,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S. — more than one-quarter of the reported total cases worldwide, though the actual numbers both in the U.S. and around the world are likely much higher due to limited testing.  Governors that were originally against stay-at-home orders finally succumbed last week after COVID-19 cases in their states increased rapidly.

There are still a few states that have not issued stay at home orders.  Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming have yet to issue any state-wide orders but they have a number of local directives suggesting residents stay indoors or have stay at home orders in place only in their harder hit counties.

For the other 95% of Americans, the states they call home slowly joined the majority to issue stay at home orders for all non-essential activities.  Just as governors issued stay-at-home orders on a rolling, piecemeal basis, they have done the same on the backend, with each governor setting his or her own time frame for lifting the order. Consequently, we have end dates spanning two months, from April 15 to June 10.  More than half of the states have already extended the end date of their original order and the new end date could be pushed back again as the pandemic unfolds.

Three Pacific coast states — California, Oregon and Washington — have formed an alliance called the “Western States Pact” that will reopen at the same time. They announced that they “have agreed to work together on a shared approach for reopening our economies – one that identifies clear indicators for communities to restart public life and business.”  California was the first to issue its order but within 3 days, Oregon and Washington followed suit.  All three states orders were issued with no set end date so their orders stay in place until further notice.

On the east coast, seven states — Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island — have formed the “Multi-State Council” that will also reopen at the same time. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the council “will come up with a framework based on science and data to gradually ease the stay at home restrictions and get our economy back up and running.”  Many of these states with an end date on their original order issued extensions with new dates in May.

Two states have stay-at-home orders that are set to expire soon; Idaho (April 15) and Kansas (April 19). Both Idaho Governor Brad Little and Kansas Governor Laura Kelly have indicated that they will extend the orders.  Eight states’ orders are due to expire between April 20 and April 26. Indiana, Mississippi, Alaska, District of Columbia, Missouri, Montana, Wisconsin and Colorado are fast approaching their end dates.  Four governors — half of this group — have already issued one extension and several have stated they are planning another.

For the last week of April, 19 states are due to lift their stay-at-home mandates.  South Carolina, New York, North Carolina, Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas have end dates at the end of April but again, more than half of the governors in this group have already extended the end dates for their orders once.

Nine states have stay-at-home orders that end May 4 or later. Notably, seven of them have already bumped back their end dates once, from April to May. If the trend continues, we can expect more states to be extending their mandates into May.