Gov. Baker Announces 4-Phase Process to Reopen MA
While plans are still fluid and details are undefined, Governor Baker announced his plans to reopen the state in a press conference today. The current stay at home advisory is set to be lifted a week from today on Monday, May 18.
While the Governor has not yet announced any plans to push that date back, he did repeat that he will proceed with caution. Each phase of reopening would be hinge on the progress of the virus. If ongoing testing for the virus discovers that certain industries are "unexpectedly susceptible to the spread of the coronavirus or if evidence of community transmission emerges", regulations could change.
The reopening phases would start with a small number of industries to reopen with restrictions and then slowly allow additional businesses to reopen with fewer and fewer restrictions until we reach the final phase.
- Phase 1 - Start: Limited industries resume operations with severe restrictions
- Phase 2 - Cautious: Additional industries resume operations with restrictions and capacity limits
- Phase 3 - Vigilant: Additional industries resume operations with guidance
- Phase 4 - New Normal: Development of vaccine and/or therapy enables resumption of ‘new normal’
Although specifics were not given, WCVB News5 in Boston provided quotes from Baker per phase:
- Start - "We're looking at industries that are more naturally set up to have little face-to-face interactions and workplaces that are better able to manage face-to-face customer interactions with certain conditions."
- Cautious - "We plan to have more industries with more face-to-face interactions resume operations, again with conditions."
- Vigilant - "Where we can allow for loosening of some of the restrictions from the earlier phases if, in fact, the public health data continues to conform to the terms we're all pursuing."
- New Normal - "We all know life will be different but as the medical and life sciences communities make progress in developing treatments or vaccines, we can really begin to put this virus into the rear-view mirror."
Additional details on the industries and businesses included in each phase are expected to be released later today.
None of that is going to happen overnight. We'll continue to follow the metrics and public health metrics to determine when phase one's start of reopening begins and when it is safe to move on to concurrent phases after that
Gov. Charlie Baker
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