Kay Ivey announced today at a press conference that her stay-at-home order would be allowed to expire at 5PM on April 30. A new safer-at-home order takes effect at that time and lasts through at least May 15th.
Ivey’s original stay-at-home order began on April 4th. It ordered people to stay at home except to meet basic needs, such as to buy groceries to go to work at an essential job. Only essential retail stores were allowed to remain open during the stay-at-home order.
The new safer-at-home order now encourages people to remain at home and to follow ‘good sanitation practices.’ All retail stores are allowed to reopen for business, provided they follow social distancing rules and reduce maximum occupancy to 50% of the building’s normal occupancy. Hospitals will be allowed to resume elective surgeries.
Some restrictions will remain in place. Restaurants, bars and breweries are still limited to take-out. Entertainment venues, close contact service providers, educational institutions and senior citizens will remain closed. Funeral services are still restricted to 10 attendees who follow social distancing.
Examples of businesses that must remain closed include:
- Night clubs
- Theaters
- Gyms
- Bowling alleys
- Barber shops
- Hair salons
- Tattoo services
The order also deals with church services. Rev. Jay Wolf, pastor of First Baptist Church of Montgomery was on hand to discuss the new order’s requirement that church services remain cancelled. Wolf said in his remarks, “At this time, Alabama does not meet the criteria proposed by the CDC for re-opening houses of worship for large in-person gatherings. Re-opening our places of worship will be a process, not an event.” Neither Ivey nor Wolf gave a date which church services may resume.
As reported by FOX 10 news, State Health Officer Scott Harris remarked that Alabama was making strong progress on coronavirus testing. “We believe we continue to increase capacity quite a bit. Our county health department teams are doing clinics in all of these counties, not every county every day, but they’re traveling to do those in every county certain days of the week at least.”
White House coronavirus task force recommendations call for states to have a 14-day decline in new infections. Alabama has not seen such a decline.
