Gov. Murphy: NJ Restraint To Continue Despite Falling COVID Cases

TRENTON, NJ — Speaking at his daily press conference Monday, Gov. Phil Murphy said several key data points are making him and state health officials "cautiously optimistic" that New Jersey's second wave of coronavirus is beginning to end. But he also said New Jersey isn't ready for a bigger reopening just yet.

"I would love to be a less dense state that has warmer weather more often in the year. In a pandemic, our density, our proximity to New York City, we just don't have the latitude that other states that don't have that density and weather reality have," he said.

Hospitalizations, death rates and new cases continue to drop: New Jersey logged under 2,000 new PCR tests on Monday (1,935), down from a peak of 6,922 on Jan. 13, the highest it has ever been in the entire pandemic, according to the state Department of Health. The last time New Jersey saw under 2,000 new cases a day was Feb. 15. COVID-related deaths are down significantly, especially compared to last April.

"It's baby steps, but I do like the fact that numbers are slowly beginning to go in a better direction," said Murphy. "The rate of transmission slipped a little bit today, but if you look at hospitalizations over the past number of days, ICU, ventilator use, it's slowly but surely, beginning to go in the right direction."

"From my taste, its too early to declare victory and we still have this naggingly high positivity rate: On weekends, its low double digits and weekdays it's high single digits," he continued. "But again, its slowly but surely — when you have six million shots in arms ... the weather getting a little bit better — that's all cause for quiet, cautious optimism."

He said its too early to to advise how New Jersey can hold proms and graduations. Expect guidance on proms, graduation ceremonies and day camps to come later this week, said the governor.

"It might be a little too early to predict our trajectory, but I think we can be cautiously optimistic," agreed Dr. Christina Tan, the state's epidemiologist. "For example, when we look at our weekly CALI activity levels, we are starting to see activity kind of dip a little bit ... which is good to hear, good to see."

She warned that nationally, coronavirus rates are still high, with 67,000 new cases a day.

"That's a lot of disease activity," she said.

New Jersey has been gripped in a second wave of COVID that began in mid-November and lasted all through the winter.

But Murphy said it is too early to make changes to indoor dining or indoor capacity restrictions, or to abandon New Jersey's mask mandate either outdoors or in stores. Residents must wear masks in indoor spaces, and outside where they cannot keep six feet of social distancing from others.

The nation of Israel, for example, abandoned its outdoor mask mandate this week, after studies there showed very little spread of coronavirus outdoors.

But Murphy said NJ "is not there yet"

"Israel has done an extraordinary job, particularly most recently with vaccinating. But we're not there yet on changing our mask mandates," he said. "I hope we will be. But first of all, it's a much warmer weather country than we are state right now. In mid- to late April, they are outdoors in a big way ... We also have a rate of transmission that is much higher than in Israel right now. I hope we get there, I just can't tell you when."

Murphy attributed the lowering case numbers to more and more people being vaccinated, plus the arrival of warmer spring weather. About 2.5 million people in New Jersey are fully vaccinated as of Monday, meaning the state is more than halfway complete to its goal of having 4.7 million New Jersey residents fully vaccinated by June.

However, Murphy several times during his press conference that he would like the FDA to end its "pause" on Johnson & Johnson's vaccine, and bring the vaccine back into public use.

"We still need J&J," he said. "Assuming it's safe and it checks all the boxes, we need it to get to those hard-to-reach places and persons where a two-dose vaccine regime makes it really hard to do."

Vaccine rates lag in New Jersey residents of color compared to white New Jersey residents.

"God willing we'll get J&J back online ... If we can get J&J back at least to some degree and Pfizer and Moderna stay steady, I have complete confidence we can get to our goal of having 4.7 million adult New Jerseyeans vaccinated by the middle of June if not before."

Supplies of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine remain steady in the state, and New Jersey is not expected to get increased doses of those vaccines.

Murphy said other states that are beating New Jersey in vaccination rates are likely only doing so because "many of the states ahead of us, and no disrespect to them, don't have populations that can compare with places like Bergen or Essex County."

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