Five more governors on Monday moved to place restrictions on their states’ residents in an effort to blunt the spread of coronavirus.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, took the most dramatic action, ordering residents to stay home except for essential outings and ordering non-essential businesses to tell employees not to report to work, effective at midnight Tuesday.
Whitmer’s order, which will remain in place for at least the next three weeks, comes as the governor noted the state went from having zero reported cases of the virus to more than 1,000 in under two weeks, though such an increase was somewhat expected as testing kits became more widely accessible.
Republican Govs. Larry Hogan of Maryland and Charlie Baker of Massachusetts stopped short of ordering residents to stay inside, but both on Monday ordered all non-essential businesses in their states closed.
Maryland’s restrictions go into place at 5 p.m., while Baker’s order takes effect beginning at noon on Tuesday and will extend until at least April 7.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers teased that his own shelter in place order would come Tuesday, dubbing the initiative “Safer at Home.” In a string of tweets, Evers noted that the order would walk back his previous declaration that he would not be issuing a shelter-in-place order. Evers, a Democrat, said more details of his order would become available in the next day.
West Virginia, the last state in the country to report its first coronavirus case, unveiled its own shelter-in-place order Monday afternoon, with Gov. Jim Justice announcing the restrictions will go into effect on Tuesday at 8 p.m.
The flurry of measures announced Monday follow in the footsteps of eight other state leaders who have issued similar mandatory orders: Ohio, Louisiana and Delaware issued stay at home orders on Sunday, joining California, Illinois, New Jersey and Connecticut. Last week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered all non-essential workers to stay home.
The new action in recent days comes amid reluctance by President Donald Trump to mandate social distancing measures at the federal level, despite a number of state leaders pleading for the president to order fixes to what they’ve complained is a patchwork pattern of restrictions across the country.
Trump said Friday he would not be ordering any kind of shelter in place restrictions at the federal level, citing an unevenness in infections in different parts of the country. Rather than push for further social distancing, the president has begun to signal a growing skepticism to en-mass lockdowns the economic devastation they have caused throughout the country.
