Finger Lakes region set to reopen

The Finger Lakes region, which includes Monroe County has met all seven metrics required to begin phase one of the state’s regional phased reopening plan when New York State on PAUSE orders expire on May 15.

The region is expected to begin opening businesses in construction; manufacturing and wholesale supply chain; retail for curbside pickup and drop-off or in-store pickup; and agriculture, forestry and fishing. Certain low-risk business and recreational activities will also be ready to reopen statewide this week, including landscaping and gardening; outdoor, low-risk recreational activities such as tennis; and drive-in movie theaters.

“We are starting a new chapter in the fight against this virus – we’ve worked together as a state to flatten the curve and the decline has finally reached a point where it is just about where we started this journey, so now we can turn to reopening,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. “As we approach May 15, we have put regional control rooms in place, which are made up of the top government officials and academic and healthcare professionals in that region, to watch the situation in each region develop and increase or decrease the activity and speed of reopening based on the  metrics and guidelines. These control rooms are critical because we just made it over the mountain and nobody wants to go back to the other side now.”

These regional control rooms will monitor the hospitalization rate, death rate, number of new hospitalizations, hospital bed capacity, ICU bed capacity, testing and contact tracing within each region during reopening and alert the state if the region’s metrics no longer meet the reopening guidelines and adjust the reopening plan for that region accordingly.