More Democratic governors have taken steps toward reopening their states as the rate of new coronavirus cases starts to slow.
After weekend protests against California’s stay-at-home orders, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Monday that some retail businesses could open as soon as Friday as the state enters the next phase of the reopening process. The Democrat said Monday that some bookstores, music stores, toy stores, florists, sporting goods stores, and more can reopen for pickup Friday, the Los Angeles Times reported. Newsom’s guidelines also give local leaders the authority to push their communities further into the reopening process by letting more businesses open at their own pace instead of following a uniform, statewide policy.
Newsom was the first governor to impose a statewide shelter-in-place order, which is the nation’s largest such order. California has received praise, including from the Trump administration, for its handling of the pandemic.
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, announced that the state has “flattened the curve” enough that some businesses can start to reopen “as soon as next week.”
Like several other states planning to reopen, Virginia will enter into a series of phases to take incremental steps to restart the state’s economy. Phase one, Northam said, would last two to four weeks.
“It means you can go out to eat again, but restaurants will use less of their seating to spread people out more,” Northam said. “Employees will wear face coverings, and they’ll do more cleaning. Phase one means more retail establishments can be open, but they’ll have to operate at lower capacity.”
Northam had drawn criticism from some conservatives in March for saying that the state’s stay-at-home order would last into June.
Pennsylvania will begin a multitiered reopening plan this week, starting with 24 northwestern and north-central counties, which have reported relatively fewer cases than other parts of the state. Gov. Tom Wolf announced last Friday that some businesses will be able to resume in-person operations this Friday, and people will be able to leave their homes. Philadelphia, Wolf said, will be one of the last parts of the state to reopen, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
So far, 24 states have reopened, and four others are set to reopen within the next week. Most of the states that have reopened have only done so partially. For instance, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, allowed the state’s stay-at-home order to expire April 26 and enacted the “safer at home” approach that allowed businesses to reopen for curbside services. On Friday, hair and nail salons and other personal care businesses were permitted to open as long as people maintain social distancing.
The United States has recorded nearly 1.2 million coronavirus cases, according to Johns Hopkins University. At least 68,600 people have died.
The Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency projected that the daily COVID-19 death toll will rise, hitting 3,000 on June 1, according to an internal report obtained by the New York Times. Currently, the daily death toll is roughly 1,750. The report also predicted that the U.S. will see about 200,000 daily coronavirus cases by the end of the month, up from the current daily increase of about 25,000.
White House spokesman Judd Deere dismissed the projections, saying, “This data is not reflective of any of the modeling done by the task force or data that the task force has analyzed.”
But public health experts and some governors are worried that opening states prematurely will exacerbate the pandemic, which is still seeing an increasing number of new cases.
“As we start to reopen aspects of the economy, it’s unlikely those cases are going to start to come down even more,” former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said on CNBC Monday. “More likely, they’ll creep up a little bit.”
Tim Bray, a vice president at Amazon Web Services, resigned in protest Friday after the company fired warehouse workers who demanded better labor practices that would protect them from contracting the coronavirus. He said in a blog post that he “snapped” after Amazon fired two employees who said warehouse workers were at risk of getting sick because proper safety precautions weren’t in place.
“I quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers who were making noise about employees frightened of Covid-19,” Bray wrote.
He added, “It’s evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison.”
The FDA, under scrutiny for allowing hundreds of antibody tests to flood the market without extensive vetting, announced it will now require test manufacturers to submit an application for emergency approval before making their tests available to the public. Public health officials such as Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, say that antibody tests are critical for understanding how the virus works.
J.Crew filed for bankruptcy protection Monday, the coronavirus’s first major retail casualty. J.Crew has $1.6 billion in debt, according to CNN, and reached a deal with lenders to convert about $1.6 billion of debt into equity.
