SALT LAKE CITY — Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson says she is considering extending the stay at home order through Memorial Day or even longer.

She told KSL NewsRadio the county expects to make an announcement this Thursday or Friday.

“Every day is a new journey with this virus,” Mayor Wilson told Utah’s Morning News.

The current order expires Monday, April 13. Wilson said she could extend it by two weeks at a time, or just do a longer order and rescind if necessary.

She said modeling shows the coronavirus peaking in late April or the first week of May, and she wants to prevent a second spike.

“We’ve tried to find that right balance. We will be measuring daily how the virus is moving, and we will know when to ease restrictions so we don’t end up back in the place where we are now,” she said.

When asked about the economic impact of a stay home order and keeping non-essential businesses closed, Wilson said “unfortunately we are looking at a global economic crisis.”

Wilson said it was troubling to see the crowded hospitals on the east coast, though Utah hospitals have been much emptier.

“If anything, we can be feeling good in our community that we’ve done the right thing here,” she said.

Related:

Utah sees 70 new cases of COVID-19 Monday, 5 more deaths Utah’s number of COVID-19 cases has increased by 70 from Sunday, with five more reported deaths, according to the Utah Department of Health.

The state epidemiologist hinted at a longer time period as well in the news conference Monday afternoon.

So far cases in Utah are not growing very fast. One national projection says fewer will die here than first thought.

“However, these are all models and so the daily case counts and the more data we put into these models, the more accurate they will be and they are likely to change over the coming weeks as well,” said Dr Angela Dunn.

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