Gov. Jared Polis announced the state will begin on Saturday to ease coronavirus restrictions by loosening the criteria for counties to qualify for elevated levels of precaution based on the state Department of Public Health and Environment’s COVID-19 dial.

Polis in a Friday news conference praised the update, which is dubbed “Dial 2.0” and is set to go into effect at 9 a.m. Saturday,  as a “more responsive tool that will allow counties to swiftly move up or down based on their needs.”

The dial determines the capacity limits under which businesses in each county must operate and will continue to range from Levels Green to Purple. But it features a number of changes including:

• Increasing the frequency of new cases for Levels Blue, Yellow and Orange from a maximum of 75, 175 and 350 cases per 100,000 respectively to a maximum of 100, 300 and 500 cases per 100,000. The new case frequency to qualify for Level Red is increasing from more than 350 cases per 100,000 to more than 500 per 100,000.

• Decreasing requirements for positivity rates for Levels Yellow and Orange from 10% and 15% respectively to 7.5% and 10%.

• Shifting the focus on hospitalizations from local hospital capacity to the number of hospitalized county residents.

• Reducing the 14-day benchmark used to gauge incidence rate, percent positivity of testing and resident hospitalizations down to seven days.

• Granting flexibility on positivity and incidence rates to counties with populations under 20,000.

A preliminary map shared by CDPHE executive director Jill Hunsaker Ryan showed those changes will shift a majority of counties down at least one level. Under the current dial, Hinsdale County sits at Level Blue, nine others are at Level Yellow and the remaining 54 counties are at Level Orange. The new dial would shift 21 other counties to Level Blue and 33 to Level Yellow while only 10 Western Slope counties will remain at Level Orange.

But while the metrics used to determine counties’ level on the dial may be shifting, the restrictions in place at each level are largely unchanged. The only major changes comes to caps in restaurants for counties in Level Yellow, which Ryan said will be raised to 50% capacity or 150 people.

Otherwise, capacity limits and school settings for each level will remain in place, as will relaxed restrictions through the state health department’s 5-Star State Certification Program, which allows businesses that comply with enhanced safety protocols to operate one level down on the dial. But those businesses in counties in levels Yellow or higher won’t be able to operate at Level Blue until 70% of 70-year-olds in the state are vaccinated with at least one dose.

It’s the first change to the dial since November, when Polis added a Level Purple. Polis said he anticipated another update to the dial in the coming months “that goes further to tie it into a percentage of folks in different demographics that are vaccinated.”