CHEYENNE– Governor Mark Gordon has unveiled a plan to transition Wyoming to a new phase of COVID-19 Coronavirus response. The plan creates a pathway to ease restrictions, recover businesses, and resume some activities.

The phased approach will be driven by health-related data and provides counties flexibility to seek variances based on local conditions.

“This will be a balanced approach that will be driven by two guiding principles– public safety and helping more people get back to work,” Governor Gordon said. “We are going to relax some of the restrictions, while also detailing what data we will monitor to make sure we stay on the right path.”

Prior to the expiration of the current health orders on April 30, the State Health Officer will be issuing modified statewide public health orders, taking the first steps to move Wyoming into the next phase.

These modified orders will be released next week and will allow county health officers to submit requests for countywide variances from those orders if the public health conditions in the county warrant the change. These variances can either be more or less restrictive, based on county-level data.

The goal is to allow flexibility based on objective data, including the state of the outbreak, hospital capacity and testing capacity.

The Executive Branch in coordination with the Wyoming Department of Health has developed a COVID-19 Metrics “dashboard” that includes six health metrics that will be utilized for making decisions about easing restrictions. This dashboard has also been provided to each of Wyoming’s counties for their health officials to utilize when considering variance requests.

The six health metrics that will be utilized include:

• New cases — have there been fewer cases over time?
• Percent of cases attributed to community spread — is the percentage the same or less?
• Percent of all tests that are positive — is the percentage the same or less?
• Total COVID-19 admissions reported by hospitals — has there been a sustained reduction in total COVID-19 hospitalizations?
• Total hospital bed availability — is bed availability in Wyoming hospitals stable?
• Total ICU bed availability — is ICU bed availability in Wyoming hospitals stable?

Currently, all of these metrics are in the stabilizing phase, except for percent of cases attributed to community spread and total COVID-19 admissions reported by hospitals, which are still in the concerning phase.

The goal is to start seeing these metrics in the improving phase.

In the week ahead, Governor Gordon will provide additional details on the easing of restrictions, including guidelines for modifying business operations for reopening, and directions to hospitals on resumption of elective surgeries.