(CNN) — With the coronavirus pandemic appearing to have peaked in New York, the gradual reopening of the epicenter of the national health crisis is beginning to take shape.
State Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday outlined his more detailed plan for that reopening, beginning with what he called low-risk businesses in the upstate to go back to work in mid-May.
“We have to be smart about it,” Cuomo said Tuesday, adding that test and infection rates and availability of hospital beds must be at adequate levels.
“Once again, I know… people feel emotional. Emotions cannot drive our reopening process.
Here’s what a reopening of New York State could look like, which already has more than 22,000 deaths and nearly 300,000 coronavirus cases:
First the manufacturing sector in the north of the state and the construction industries
Governor Andrew Cuomo says New York “has to be smart” about reopening. (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez / Getty Images)
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These sectors could return to work in the upstate regions sometime after May 15, when New York State’s “mandatory confinement” order is supposed to expire.
Construction and manufacturing jobs pose fewer exposure risks for workers.
“Those are two industries that employ a lot of people,” Cuomo said. “We think you can take the right precautions and learn the lessons from where we have been.”
Companies need to develop detailed reopening plans that address public health issues.
“How do you incorporate social distancing or fewer people in space to reduce density?” Asked the governor. «How do you have the correct personal protective equipment and how is it going to be monitored? Will everyone’s temperature be taken? That is the decision of the companies.
The manufacturing and construction sectors account for at least 46,000 jobs in the central part of the state alone.
“He’s a big employer,” Cuomo said. “These companies can embrace the new normal in terms of their employees and in terms of the processes they implement.
Cuomo said companies deemed “most essential” with lower risk of infection for workers and customers will be a priority in the second phase. They would be followed by other industries considered “less essential”, those that present a greater risk of spreading the infection.
State officials will closely monitor the data before each phase. Companies looking to reopen will be evaluated on “how essential is the service that the business provides and how risky that business is,” Cuomo said.
“Remember we’ve been through hell and back in the last 60 days or so,” Cuomo said. ” What New Yorkers have done is save lives. But we have to be vigilant. This is not over”.
Dr. David Katz, founder of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, agreed that the preference for reopening is “a return to the world stratified by risk, with lower-risk groups at the forefront.”
“There is still too much we don’t know about this contagion to take anything for granted,” he said in an email. “We must verify each inference with empirical data. So first they are presumed to be at lower risk (good health, under 50) and then others come back in waves, once it is clear that severe infection rates are as low as projected.
The decision on school openings will be regional
Will all schools in New York be closed? A decision is expected by the end of the week.
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A decision on reopening schools in the state could come by the end of the week, according to Cuomo. It will be taken in concert with the governments of New Jersey and Connecticut.
Consideration is being given to whether schools will reopen before the end of the current school year and what to do with summer schools in districts that want to make up for lost time, Cuomo told WAMC radio.
President Donald Trump on Monday urged the nation’s governors to “seriously consider” reopening schools, in order to restart the economy, although many states have already recommended not resuming the school year.
But by the end of the school year, many students are unlikely to return to classrooms in the foreseeable future.
According to a CNN school closure count, 43 states, as well as Washington, have ordered or recommended that schools not reopen this academic year.
Is it worth opening the schools for a month or six weeks, or is it better to wait until the fall? Katz wondered. “Are we thinking of running schools in the summer of this year?”
Children appear to be generally in the lowest risk group for coronavirus infection, Katz said. Seasonal flu seems much more dangerous to them.
But there is more than that: what about the teachers? The administrators? ”He asked himself via email.
Parks and beaches are not in the immediate plans
Parks, beaches and attractions along the water will only reopen when deemed safe, Cuomo said.
“Density would be the problem,” he said, adding that decisions will be made in collaboration with neighboring states.
Major attractions or businesses that would attract large numbers of people from outside the area will not open immediately.
“We cannot open an attraction that can attract a lot of people from outside the region and then overwhelm the people in that region,” Cuomo said. “There is a lot of pent-up demand. We’ve seen this before where, when we’re not coordinated, we have people from New York going to Connecticut because Connecticut has parks or access to slides that are open. “
The so-called “regional control” of neighboring states
A “regional control room” made up of state health officials would oversee the reopening. You will be guided by information such as hospital capacity and infection rates.
Hospital capacity must be less than 70%. Areas should show a two-week decline in coronavirus cases.
Any red flag raised by regional monitors would trigger a “danger button so you can really delay the reopening,” said Cuomo, who spoke Tuesday about the number of cases, hospitalizations and intubations that have dropped across the state.
“Some upstate regions have a problem comparable to parts of the Midwest,” Cuomo said. Much less than New York City.
Testing, tracing and isolating those exposed will be key in the reopening.
“The current recommendation is (that) you need at least 30 trackers for every 100,000 people,” said the governor. ” We have to have isolation facilities in place. ‘
Katz said the lack of representative data for the entire US population leaves many questions.
“The more we know, the more reliably we can achieve the goal of minimizing the total damage: reducing health and lives lost to both the virus and social collapse, to an irreducible minimum,” he said. “We must proceed in stages because that allows us to adjust and refine ourselves, even as we move towards normality.”
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