Last week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, announced the reopening of some beaches and parks. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, announced Monday he will not extend the state’s “safer-at-home” order on April 30, allowing most businesses to reopen on May 1.
“Unlike other businesses, these entities have been unable to manage inventory, deal with payroll, and take care of administrative items while we shelter in place,” Kemp said Monday. “This measure allows them to undertake baseline operations that most other businesses in the state have maintained since I issued the shelter-in-place order.”
Georgia and Connecticut have roughly the same number of confirmed Covid-19 cases, more than 19,000, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Connecticut’s Covid-19 death toll is nearly double that of Georgia. Lamont noted that Connecticut’s proximity to the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, New York City, is a risk factor that sets the state apart.
Lamont said he’s looking at May 20 as a tentative date to begin reopening the state, adding that an increased capacity to test for Covid-19 and a greater supply of surgical masks will be key.
“I want to do it cautiously. I don’t want to have another big outbreak the likes of which you see in India and Singapore and other places,” Lamont said. “My instinct is that we’re going to first focus on our big manufacturing and outside construction.”
Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb echoed Lamont’s concerns about the sectors of business that Georgia has decided to first reopen.
“It feels like they collected a list of the businesses that were most risky and decided to open those first,” he said on “Squawk Box.” “I think that we should try to focus on trying to bring people back to work in factories, offices first.”
Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/21/georgia-got-lifting-coronavirus-restrictions-backwards-connecticut-gov-ned-lamont-says.html
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