EP County Judge ‘Ho Ho Holiday Curfews Are Happening’

El Paso seems to have dodged a bullet when it comes to a post-Thanksgiving holiday COVID-19 spike, but we aren't out of the woods yet according to El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego. Samaniego says that while the post-Thanksgiving numbers are encouraging, he doesn't want anyone to let their guard down during the upcoming Christmas and New Year's Eve holidays.

On Monday afternoon, the County Judge issued a curfew that targets gatherings and not businesses. He said he is trying to avoid the kind of gathering like the one that happened in the desert the day after Thanksgiving where hundreds of people attended what was supposed to be a toy run. The organizers of that event cancelled but people showed up anyway. At the time, Samaniego said because there was no curfew in effect he couldn't do anything to disperse the crowd.

This new round of curfews will take place a couple of days before and after both Christmas New Year's Eve. The County Judge says that he is more worried about gatherings than businesses. The County seems to be working on trying to keep people to stick to their bubbles of people who live in their households and not have gatherings with anyone who doesn't live in your house.

The best thing that came out of the Thanksgiving holidays is that it seems that we did the right thing and it shows in the numbers of new cases. Let's do the same thing during Christmas and New Year's Eve and flatten this scary curve of infections and deaths.

You can watch the County Judge talking about the new COVID-19 curfews here: