SIOUX FALLS. S.D. (KELO.com) — Gov. Kristi Noem continues to resist the idea of a statewide stay-at-home order in South Dakota, despite action from other states.
At her regular media briefing Thursday, Noem said any executive action from her office would “need to be sustained.”
“If I were to tell everybody today: ‘Go to your house, and don’t come out for two weeks,’ I think a lot of folks in this state think that the virus would be gone and this would all be over and it’d be fixed. And that’s just simply not true,” Noem said.
The governor said once a stay-at-home order was lifted, “everybody would get infected at one time and we would overwhelm our health care system.”
The hypothetical Noem described is similar to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s response to the coronavirus. Walz issued a two-week stay-at-home order running from March 28 to April 10.
Like many of the governors issuing similar orders, Walz did not claim restricting travel would wipe out the virus. Instead, he said the two-week pause was needed to allow the state to better prepare to fight the disease, including expanding hospital capacity, acquiring medical supplies, and ramping up testing.
“The virus will still be here when this two-week period is over, but we’ll be better prepared,” Walz said in a statement announcing the stay-at-home order.
Walz has since said he is considering extending the order past April 10.
Noem said she and her team have reviewed different medical models to predict the spread of COVID-19 as best they can. She now expects the peak of the virus to fall in late June or early July, later than previously expected. She said this was largely due to the social distancing and hygiene efforts South Dakotans are already working on.
