El Paso County mitigation plan aims to lower COVID-19 infection rate and keep variances

EL PASO COUNTY, Colo. (KRDO) — El Paso County leaders are working to lower the coronavirus positivity rate in the county in order to meet Gov. Jared Polis’ goals and avoid losing reopening allowances.

KRDO reached out to El Paso County Commissioner Holly Williams, who says the county needs to get to a 5% positivity rate to dodge variance repercussions.

“Yesterday we were at 8% and that’s slowly coming down. We’d like to see it come down faster,” she said.

According to the governor, the county has a couple weeks to get to that point.

“We are worried about the variances,” Williams said. “The governor did state yesterday we have two weeks, but we proactively submitted what we call a mitigation plan a week ago saying we would do everything in our power to get the numbers down.”

The mitigation plan includes things we’ve heard time and time again. Williams says it comes down to compliance. People need to stay home if they’re sick, wear a mask, and social distance. 

County Commissioner Williams is meeting with Orange Theory Fitness this week to discuss concerns about the county possibly losing some business capacity. Williams says she also talked with the owners of Veda Salon on Academy about their fears. Gabrielle Epler mans the front desk at the salon.

“So normally we have about 26 stylists on the floor,” Epler said. “When we first reopened we only had four. Now we’re up to 12. So if that does happen with the capacity, we would have to lessen it maybe back to six or four.”

Though businesses, consumers, and county leaders all hope that doesn’t happen.

“We still want to keep our businesses in business,” Williams said. “But let’s be careful when we go there.”

Gov. Polis was not specific about what a variance penalty could look like.