INDIANA, USA — In the state's weekly COVID-19 update Wednesday, Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb announced the scaling back of the state's Stage 5 reopening plan. The decision comes as the state is seeing a current surge in COVID-19 cases.
The latest report is the highest daily total ISDH has reported since the pandemic started with 5,156 cases.
Holcomb cited several factors surrounding the state's response to the virus reaching critical points including hospitalized patients, new COVID-19 patients and the 7-day positivity rate being more than 10%.
RELATED: Real-time Updates: Indiana to roll back Stage 5 reopening plan, enact new pandemic restrictions
"Unfortunately too many of us have let our guard down," Holcomb said.
Stage 5 was initially implemented in September and allowed restaurants, stores and bars to operate at full capacity with social distancing guidelines in place.
Part of moving back from Stage 5 of reopening includes a requirement for businesses to post signs saying masks are required and to encourage social distancing.
Places like the Red Yetti in Jeffersonville are months ahead. Service manager Nick Nevels tells us it's one way they can warn customers about requirements before they step foot inside of their restaurant.
"We put them up day one, as soon as there was a mask mandate we had them up," Nevels said.
Stage five allowed places like restaurants to be at full capacity, but Nevels said they never entered that phase. They made the conscious decision to put everything six feet apart.
"You can't do 100% capacity and social distance at the same time, it's just impossible," Nevels said. "I mean we are looking at the numbers, they are skyrocketing right now. If you want to keep a business open as long as you can, you got to keep everybody inside safe and not sick."
"We have to affect that change now because the doubling of cases that we've had for the last three or four weeks is an exponential growth that's very difficult to get out of without these changes," State Health Commissioner Dr. Kristina Box said.
Those changes are specific to counties in both the "orange" and "red" will have added restrictions. Clark, Floyd, Jefferson and Scott are counties with the "orange" designations, according to ISDH. They include limiting gatherings to 50 people in orange zones, which is where southern Indiana lies. School athletic events and others will also only be allowed to have 25%. And larger events will need to be approved by the health department.
These new changes are not directly related to businesses, because the governor says they are really trying to avoid shutting them down.
"It's still very important that we stay open even though we understand how important it is to also be super safe with everybody that comes in her," Nevels said.
Holcomb also asked people to limit visits at long-term care facilities and encouraged people to limit gatherings indoors.
The governor said they are trying to avoid businesses having to shutdown, so Hoosiers must take precautions now to stop the surge.
"Things will shutdown and decrease if we don't take action," Box echoed.
Holcomb implored Hoosiers to continue social distancing and said that coronavirus is spread whenever people let their guards down.
The roll back of the reopening stage begins on November 15 and will last through the end of the month.
You can watch Holcomb's full update here:
►Make it easy to keep up-to-date with more stories like this. Download the WHAS11 News app now. For Apple or Android users.
Have a news tip? Email assign@whas11.com, visit our Facebook page or Twitter feed.