How Good Will Social Distancing Compliance be with Little or No Enforcement?
As you know, the governor declared that we are in Phase I and let his “stay at home” executive order (EO 2020-33) expire Friday night. He created a new one that took effect Saturday morning. It encourages businesses and people to do the right thing to mitigate COVID spread, but has no compliance or enforcement criteria. Here’s the new Executive Order: EO 36.
While other governors are making modifications to the federal guidance withmore specific and measurable criteria like the number of contact tracers and persons tested per 100,000 people along with more specific hospital measurements to make decisions, our governor is using theraw federal guidance. The basic federal guidance uses the following simple criteria to determine when to move to Phase I:
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A 14-day downward trend of influenza-like illnesses and COVID-like illnesses;
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A 14-day downward trend of positive COVID-19 tests, assuming a flat or increasing volume of tests;
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Robust testing, including antibody testing, for at-risk health care workers; and
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Hospital capacity that would allow medical professionals to treat all patients without crisis care.
The first and last of the bullets have been met. The middle two bullets are in a gray area. One could argue that they’ve been met, but one could also argue that they haven’t. Regardless, the Governor believes Arizona meets Federal Phase I and has pressed ahead by letting the former Stay at Home Order expire.
As of yesterday, all businesses can be open but they’re encouraged to implement a series of mitigation measures and have good plans in place. Cities and counties are prohibited from requiring anything more than what’s inEO 36.
There’s no specific enforcement provision in the new executive order. However it does include this language: “All law enforcement and regulatory agencies that have enforcement authority under existing state law should first focus on educating and working to promote best practices to accomplish this goal…”.
I don’t know what existing laws might be out there that would apply to businesses not doing the right thing. Maybe there are some, but I don’t know what they might be. We’ll see in the coming days whether bars, restaurants etc. (and their customers) behave responsibly. If they don’t, we’ll be back to square one probably.
Perhaps you saw the news stories about bars along Mill Avenue in Tempe that were disregarding social distancing and infection control best practices. If behavior like that proliferates, then we’re all in trouble. I sincerely hope this kind of behavior doesn’t metastasize.
Editorial note: There has been a lot of public debate and discussion about what the proper timing is to relax some of the Stay at Home interventions. Basically- lots of talk about WHEN to allow things to open. Far less discussion has been about HOW they open.
To me, thehowquestion is more important than thewhenquestion. It’ll be super important that retail stores, salons, and restaurants have good, effective and evidence-based mitigation measures in place when they open. So, basically, I’d like to see more thought and debate put into providing specific guidance and compliance criteria for how these businesses can open responsibly.
