New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on
Monday that several regions of the state outside New York City
could start reopening their economies this weekend after meeting
criteria related to hospitalisations and testing for the novel
coronavirus.
Cuomo said that the Finger Lakes, Mohawk Valley and Southern
Tier regions in central and western New York meet the seven
criteria to reopen, including a two-week decline in hospital
deaths and enough people to trace the contacts of new cases.
He also said certain business and recreational activities,
including tennis, landscaping and drive-in theaters could open
on May 15 when a stay-at-home order expires. The regions that
qualify will also be allowed to reopen after that date.
"Some regions are ready to go today," Cuomo told a daily
briefing. "They just need to get some logistical pieces in order
by the end of the week."
Due to the rapid spread of the virus in New York City,
Cuomo's state has been by far the state hardest hit by the
pandemic, accounting for more than one-third of the nearly
80 000 American lives lost, according to a Reuters tally.
But a nearly two-month shutdown of schools and non-essential
businesses worked to limit infections, staving off a collapse of
the city's hospital system. Hospitalisations have been on a
downtrend for nearly a month, while the 161 fatalities reported
for Sunday marked the lowest daily death toll since March 26.
While New York has taken a cautious approach to relaxing
restrictions on business and daily life, other states - many of
them in the South and Midwest - have moved to reopen even in the
face of rising infections.
Cuomo, who has emerged as a leading national voice on the
crisis, warned that reopening too quickly could backfire.
"We took the worst situation in the nation and changed the
trajectory," Cuomo said. "The rest of the nation the cases are
still on the incline."
Cuomo said regional reopenings would be coordinated across
the state and that hospitalizations and other metrics would be
watched closely. If "circuit breakers" are triggered,
restrictions could be put back into place, he said.
"We just made it over the mountain. Nobody wants to go back
to the other side of the mountain," the governor said.
At an earlier briefing on Monday, New York City Mayor Bill
de Blasio said that while progress on key indicators on the
virus had been made "it's not quite where we need it to be" to
allow for a relaxing of social distancing measures.
"June is when we're potentially going to be able to make
some real changes, if we can continue our progress" de Blasio
said.