Durham County extends strict coronavirus stay-at-home order. Here are the new rules.

The city of Durham and Durham County extended their combined stay-at-home order Friday, as the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the county approached 1,000.

The new order has no end date. It will remain in effect until it is rescinded, Mayor Steve Schewel said.

It retains a local requirement for face coverings, both for residents when they go out and can’t socially distance and also for store employees.

It adopts the governor’s rule allowing outdoor gatherings of up to 10 people if social distancing can be done. The local order previously allowed gatherings of up to five people. It also adopts the governor’s rule for indoor religious services: up to 10 people as long as six feet of physical distance is maintained.

But the local order limits funerals to 25 people, with Schewel saying the Durham community is not ready to allow the maximum 50 people the governor’s order allows.

The local order has also required employers to screen workers for COVID-19 symptoms and to take their temperature, among other requirements.

“I can’t think of a time in Durham’s history where we have faced this kind of emergency,” Schewel told Durham’s Recovery and Renewal Task Force, which met for the first time Friday morning. The group will help elected leader decide how Durham should gradually reopen and is scheduled to serve 100 days.

Gov. Roy Cooper’s executive order does not let local governments have stricter rules for retail businesses than the state has.

Under the current Phase One of Cooper’s plan to gradually reopen the state, most businesses may operate at half of their store’s capacity. Exceptions include personal care businesses like hair salons, restaurant dining room and gyms.

Durham County’s COVID-19 doubling rate slows

As of Friday morning, there had been 949 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Durham County, according to the county’s website. There had been 37 deaths, 33 of which had occurred in long-term care settings.

The News & Observer on Wednesday requested data from the city and county and the Durham County Department of Public Health on testing, hospital visits and any other criteria they are using in extending the local order. As of Friday morning, they had not provided that material.

At the task force meeting, however, Schewel said — excluding cases at the Durham County part of the federal prison complex in Butner — Durham County has been averaging 12 new confirmed cases per day over the past two weeks.

The doubling rate has gone from nine days in late March to 16 days in late April. At the current pace, not including the Butner prison outbreak, the county’s doubling rate would be over 50 days, Schewel said.

But Schewel and Wendy Jacobs, chair of the Durham County Board of Commissioners, stressed now is not the time to return to normal, at least not as normal was before the pandemic.

Recovery and Renewal Task Force

The Durham Recovery and Renewal Task Force will advise Schewel and Jacobs. It has public health experts, business leaders and a representative of the Durham County Emergency Operations Center.

The task force is working to establish metrics and monitor contact tracing and the supply of personal protective equipment needed to safely move toward reopening.

Schewel said the Durham community has low community spread, about 17% of its cases, but also low community immunity. “So an outbreak or outbreaks could spread quickly and far and wide if we are not safe and careful,” he said.

Jacobs said the task force will help the community figure out how to get through the next few months and identify longer-term steps to adapt until a vaccine is developed.

“I think we all recognize that there is no kind of going back to the way we were before,” Jacobs said. “And in many ways we don’t want to go back to the way we were before because if anything this crisis has really magnified the inequities and the disparities that we have.”

The roughly 15-member task force talked briefly Friday about issues such as supplying struggling small businesses and residents with masks and providing job training in the shifting economic landscape.

“We need to make sure that we do this in an equitable way, that we retrain our workforce to take advantage of the jobs that exist on the other end because, as unfortunate as it sounds, many of our hospitality workers aren’t going to have a place to land,” said Geoff Durham, the president and chief executive officer of the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce.

Among other items, the task force agreed to explore how to help businesses voluntarily comply with social distancing and how to better inform residents and businesses about restrictions. It also will look for ways the Durham community can help small and medium-size businesses.

In related news:

▪ The Waste Disposal and Recycling Center, at 2115 E. Club Blvd., will reopen Monday, May 18. The transfer station, hand-unload area, and the yard waste composting facility will be open from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, with the last customer inside the gate at 3:45 p.m. Cash will not be accepted, and customers must wear masks.

This story was originally published May 15, 2020 at 10:48 AM.