Durham extending strict city-county stay-at-home order

Mayor Steve Schewel said Tuesday that Durham and Durham County will extend their stay-at-home order past its scheduled expiration on Friday.

Posted 4:30 p.m. May 12, 2020 — Updated 11:02 p.m. May 12, 2020

Sarah Krueger

, WRAL Durham reporter

DURHAM, N.C. — Mayor Steve Schewel said Tuesday that Durham and Durham County will extend their stay-at-home order past its scheduled expiration on Friday.

Details on what will be included in the new order will be released "sometime mid-week," Schewel said.

"We will be simplifying our order. We will be adopting the governor’s order, and we will be adding our own restrictions that we think are important," he said. "For example, we will keep in place the requirement for face coverings when people are not socially distancing."

Durham was among the first cities in North Carolina to implement a stay-at-home order in late March. The order initially ran through the end of April, but officials extended it through May 15 and put restrictions in place calling for people to cover their faces in public.

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Gov. Roy Cooper relaxed some restrictions in his statewide order last Friday, allowing some retailers and other "non-essential" businesses to resume operations if they adhered to strict cleaning protocols and limited the number of people inside a store or office to ensure social distancing guidelines could be met.

Schewel said the statewide order takes precedence over Durham's order when it comes to allowing retailers to open.

"We’re not able to make any restrictions more stringent than what the governor has provided for retail businesses," he said.

But he added, “We will have other similar requirements that are beyond the governor’s order” in the new city-county stay-at-home order.

The current order in Durham also requires employers to conduct health screenings of workers at the start of every shift and limits showings of unoccupied homes up for sale to no more than three per day. No in-person showings of occupied homes are allowed.

Some Durham residents said they were glad to hear that the city and the county continue to take a more conservative approach to resuming activities during the pandemic than the state.

"I actually think it’s a really good idea," Deja Price said. "I know everyone wants to get out of the house and do what they’re used to, but I think it’s much safer for us to be safe. Be in the house and extend the order so everyone’s not just spreading germs they don’t know that they have."

"If we don’t keep this order in place, we’re going to have an uptick in numbers, I believe," Faye Smith said.

Durham County Public Health Director Rod Jenkins said he has noticed a "strong uptick" in the number of coronavirus infections in the Latino community, which he said is concerning.

Jenkins said that he convened a group of experts on Monday to try to promote awareness of best virus-prevention practices within that community.

The county is adding 25 people to help track the contacts of infected individuals, and they will start training on Wednesday, Jenkins said. He said at least five of them will be fluent in Spanish.

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