Denver County Current Status
"Colorado’s dial framework standardizes different levels of “openness” at the county level. It is a tool for counties to use to make life during the pandemic more sustainable, allowing us to balance, to the greatest extent possible, controlling the virus with our social and economic needs." – Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
The Colorado dial consists of five levels from the most restrictive “stay at home” level to least restrictive, “protect our neighbors” level. With the exception of additional protect our neighbors requirements*, each level is based on 3 metrics:
- New cases: How much the virus is circulating in a county.
- Percent positivity: Whether there is sufficient COVID-19 testing to capture the level of virus transmission.
- Impact on hospitalizations: Whether hospitalizations are increasing, stable, or declining.
*To find details on the additional protect our neighbors metrics, please see the Denver protect our neighbors page.
Summary of level requirements:
Moving between levels:
In order to change from one stage to the other, each county must sustain compliance with all three metrics within a given level for 2 weeks. In addition, if any of the 3 metrics do not meet the threshold for more than 2 weeks, a county can move towards a more restrictive level. These changes are made in consultation with Colorado Department of Public Health. Given a county must sustain these thresholds for a minimum of 2 weeks, the overall county level may not reflect the current metric levels at a given time.