Long Island On The Road To Reopening, But Not Just Yet

NASSAU COUNTY, NY — Long Island is on the road to reopening, Nassau County Executive Laura Curran said. The area has met five of the seven requirements that the state has laid out for areas to begin reopening from the coronavirus shutdown, and is on its way to meeting the last two.

On Monday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo outlined the seven criteria that areas of the state need to meet in order to reopen following the ending of the NY ON PAUSE order, which ends on Friday. They include decreased hospitalizations and deaths attributed to COVID-19, as well as testing and tracing programs being in place.

The reopening is being carried out by regions because the state doesn't want to have one county open and then draw people from nearby counties still on lockdown to that area. So Nassau and Suffolk county are being considered together, and both have to meet the criteria.

At a press briefing on Monday, Curran outlined how Nassau is doing on the criteria to reopen. The first is 14 days of decreased hospitalizations, which the county met more than a week ago. Sunday was the 23-straight day of decreased coronavirus hospitalizations in Nassau.

"I'm proud of our residents who are minimizing the spread so our people can get back to work," Curran said.

The area also has to be able to meet minimum testing requirements, which Nassau does. The areas also need to have contact tracers in place, which Curran said are being hired by the state. So that step will be taken care of, she said.

The two criteria the area is not hitting is in the number of deaths and the number of new patients being admitted to hospitals. Nassau is still seeing a high number of deaths, and one of the criteria for reopening is a 14-day decline in hospital deaths related to COVID-19. On Sunday, Nassau reported 10 new days, but had 45 deaths the day before.

The area also has to reduce the number of people coming into the hospital to 2 out of every 100,000 residents on Long Island, which comes out to around 56 new hospitalizations every day.

Last week, Long Island was at about 5.7 out of 100,000, Curran said. Today, that number was at 2.85. "So we are definitely going in the right direction, and we seem to be going into the right direction rather quickly," she said.

Once those seven metrics are met, areas can begin Phase 1 of reopening. This allows the reopening of construction, manufacturing, wholesale supply, agriculture and curb-side pickup for retail.

"Phase 1 for us means a lot of people will be going back to work," Curran said. "Seventeen percent of jobs on Long Island are in construction, manufacturing and whole-sale trade."

But when Long Island will reopen is hard to say. It won't be May 15, as the area needs two weeks of decreased deaths to meet the Phase 1 reopening goals.