It was on Thursday that Governor Gary Herbert announced that most of Utah would move into the yellow – low risk phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Castle Country Radio was able to sit down with Health Director, Brady Bradford to discuss the move and what it means for Carbon and Emery Counties.

“In looking at the number of cases, the number of tests that have happened, what’s happening in our hospitals as well, and all of that after review we find Carbon and Emery Counties at a low-risk phase,” said Bradford. “We still encourage people if you have a symptom, those symptoms we’ve talked about so often, coughing, fever, there’s a number of symptoms, if you have any one of them, we can arrange for the test to happen which is great news.” If this had been two months ago it would have been a bit difficult to get testing done but now that the state has been moved into the yellow phase it makes testing more readily available for people.

Moving into yellow status doesn’t necessarily mean that everywhere is now open, there may be some businesses that are taking its time to move into the yellow phase. “There are still some businesses that I think that have chosen to still be a little bit slower there is some government offices that still have a plan to provide services online or by phone for couple more weeks,” said Bradford. Some businesses may have precautions set up when they reopen for patrons to follow but that is up to each individual business.

Sporting activities is another activity that many in the area have missed over the last few months. “Sports leagues, recreation departments have only had a little bit of time to adjust to this news but we expect that families will start to get information from these organizations within the next little while that will describe changes moving forward but the ability to have some competition,” explained Bradford. Each family will need to evaluate each situation they are put in to determine the precautions that they will need to take for themselves.