[dropcap]A[/dropcap]fter more than two months battling the deleterious effects of COVID-19, Westchester County took its first steps toward restarting the economy on Tuesday.
The county, part of the Mid-Hudson Valley region, began “Phase One” of a reopening plan developed by New York state termed “NY Forward.”
The May 26 phased reopening, announced by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, at his May 23 press briefing, comes on the heels of the region reaching all seven metrics put in place by the state. The final hurdle was identifying enough contact tracers to meet those guidelines.
The entire state had been at a standstill ever since Cuomo put into effect “NYS on PAUSE” on March 22, shutting down all non-essential business and services as well as implementing a statewide stay-at-home order to minimize the spread of the coronavirus pandemic and protect a vulnerable healthcare system.
“The numbers are going down every day and we’re making real progress to stop the spread of this virus, and now we’re focusing on reopening,” Cuomo said. “We don’t want a region to reopen before its ready, and the Mid-Hudson Valley Region has now met all the criteria necessary to begin reopening.”
The Mid-Hudson Valley joins the Capital Region, Western New York, Central New York, North Country, Finger Lakes, Southern Tier and Mohawk Valley regions, all of which are already in the first phase of reopening.
Cuomo is optimistic that the Long Island region, with its number of deaths dropping and contact tracing coming together, could begin to reopen as soon as May 27, after press time. If so, that would leave just New York City as the remaining region still on pause. But the hope is that region—the country’s epicenter for the contagion, accounting for roughly 16% of the 99,459 deaths nationwide—would begin its own reopening by mid-June.
Now, as the state begins to try and piece itself back together, Westchester will hit the restart button by reopening just construction, manufacturing and supply chain jobs, retail stores for curbside pickup and drop-off or in-store pickup as well as agriculture, forestry and fishing.
For the region to move into the second of a four-phase plan, major indicators—hospitalization rate and infection rate, most notably—cannot show a trend in the wrong direction. And each phase would run for a minimum of two weeks to serve as an assessment period, according to Westchester county officials.
The latest data, as of May 22, showed that there were still 1,862 active COVID-19 cases in the county, according to Westchester County Executive George Latimer, a Democrat. But that number was down by about 100 from the previous day, a continued reduction offering a sense of optimism for government officials in recent weeks.
“Statistically, we continue to see trends in the same direction we have over the last seven weeks,” said Latimer while providing a virtual press briefing on May 22 from Mount Kisco. “We peaked in the latter part of March, the first week of April when those were the worst set of numbers… we’ve had a steady slow decline… we are now on the down slope. What we hope is to continue to show the metrics we need to show in order to justify, for the governor’s purposes, the ability to open the Hudson region.”
But the toll the public health crisis has taken on the Westchester community has been immeasurable. In total, 1,319 county residents, as of May 22, have died of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
“[On May 21] we lost six Westchester residents. The night before it was eight…. That compares to its peak of 45, 50 people dying,” Latimer said. “So, the rate of fatalities is dropping but there is still a spread of this disease that we have to deal with.”
As Westchester reopens the economy, paramount for county leaders is balancing loosening restrictions while making sure there isn’t an additional spike of COVID-19 cases.
One of the biggest decisions was to open county beaches to Westchester residents only for the Memorial Day Weekend, beginning on Friday, May 22.
Latimer said Westchester-owned beaches—Playland Beach and Croton Point Beach—would close on Tuesday, May 26 through Thursday, May 28 so county officials could assess how the opening weekend went.
Beachgoers were expected to maintain social distancing and wear masks when using the restrooms or walking along the premises of the beach or parking lot.
“If we can manage that over the course of this weekend we would plan to keep those beaches open next weekend,” he said.
Typically, county beaches don’t open during weekdays until the end of the school year in late June, but since schools have already canceled the remainder of the year, Latimer said opening beaches sooner is something being considered.
CONTACT: chris@hometwn.com
