Last week, Governor Polis announced an updated version of Colorado’s dial dashboard, dubbed Dial 2.0. Since last year the state has been moving counties up and down the dial based on COVID case rates, hospital capacities and other trends.

These guidelines have tried to help the public understand how each region’s status and behaviors were affecting their place on the dial—and therefore, how open (or not) their communities and businesses could be at any given time. They also were used to show people how practices such as mask-wearing and social distancing could help improve communities’ position on the dial.

Now that COVID vaccines have arrived and are being distributed, the state decided to adjust the way it uses its dial measurements to determine public health orders and updates. The primary changes under Dial 2.0 are a shortening of the case incidence metric from 14 to 7 days, which will allow communities to move more nimbly up or down the dial; changing the case incidence metrics in all color categories; and a slight alteration in the testing positivity rates for the Level Yellow and Orange. Governor Polis also said a “Dial 3.0” will likely be unveiled in the coming months as conditions dictate.

What this means to Arapahoe County residents and businesses is that we are currently under Level Yellow restrictions, and that we have an opportunity to move quickly to the less limited Level Blue as long as we can continue to improve our COVID number across the board.