Page last updated on September 7, 2021 at 1:46 pm
Hi, this is Mayor John Hamilton.
It’s Monday, September 28 - just giving an update to the public about things going on particularly related to COVID/Coronavirus. Thanks for paying attention and checking in. The Governor made the big announcement last week about planning to move the state to Stage 5, including plans to eliminate the mask requirement and ending a bunch of restrictions on gathering places, bars, restaurants, etc.
The short news that is important is that we locally are not making changes at this time. We are going to continue with the local county health and city ordinances and rules that will require mask-wearing, that will continue to limit gathering sizes, and the behaviors that have been really helpful locally to protect what we’re doing. In particular, we will continue to have the restrictions on social gatherings for public accommodations of 100 for indoors and 150 for outdoors, with continued requirement for social distancing and masking. Inside city limits, we’re going to continue the requirement to limiting private social gatherings to 15, or fewer. That’s been very important as we have been trying to control the spread with tens of thousands of students coming back.
So, do look for the continuation of these local measures even as the state relaxes. I think they are moving too fast, I don’t think the science justifies the steps they’re taking at the state and I think our county health department and I know we agree that what we have in place here is helping. Last week, IU reported the second week in a row of substantial improvements in their basic foundational testing results. If you check Wednesday morning, they release on their dashboard every Wednesday this week’s results. So that will be the third week we’ll be looking for, we hope, positive improvement, but we’ll monitor that. I continue to meet regularly with the health experts to make the right choices, but, I do think you should expect that locally we will continue what we have. We’re pleased to see outdoor dining happening downtown quite a bit, and other measures, and people needing exemptions can apply for them.
I’ll mention as well, with Halloween on the way, this year’s Halloween needs to be driven by health requirements and what the health data and experts tell us. So we are really counting on the county health department to give us guidance on how and what we should all be doing for Halloween for those of you who are planning for that. Otherwise, we have good indications locally that things are going well, we want to see employees back safely, we want to see commerce, we want to see Indiana University and other people able to do what they want to do, but these restrictions are really important and are helping. So continue to wear your mask, continue to physically distance, continue to use good hygiene, and stay home if you are feeling sick, and we’ll keep watching as we can through all of this and continue to do what we can to protect our community. Things can turn on a dime, but so far, checking data each week, we are pleased with the direction we are going but very cautious. Thanks for all you are doing, please be in touch if you want any more information or suggestions, resources, and thanks for all you are doing to help Bloomington stay safe.
