ALBANY – When it comes to reopening businesses in Chautauqua County and Western New York there was some good news delivered by the governor’s office on Sunday.
Governor Andrew Cuomo said Western New York could soon start reopening from coronavirus shutdowns after his administration made a change in the way it calculates its COVID-19 benchmarks as part of its Forward New York reopening plan. As a result, Western New York could get the green light to enter Phase 1 of reopening at least a week sooner than it would have been able to under the state’s prior calculation.
According to Cuomo, the region will now be allowed to open as soon as it can hire or train additional contract tracers tasked with keeping contact with COVID-positive patients and others who are quarantined.
As announced at the state of this month, the ten economic regions in the state can only begin reopening if they meet seven key metrics. At first, those standards required regions to show a sustained, 14-day decline in COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths, or if they had never seen a spike of more than 15 hospitalizations or five deaths in any three-day period since the start of the virus outbreak in March. As of Saturday, Western New York was at least ten days away from meeting the former benchmark and was disqualified from meeting the latter because it had seen significant spikes in March and April.
But on Sunday the governor reset the clock to May 15, when the state’s first regions were allowed to reopen. The shift allows Western New York to qualify because it hasn’t seen a sharp spike in the past three days.
Under the reopening plan, Phase 1 allows nonessential manufacturing, construction and retail businesses to reopen, but with social-distancing and density-reduction precautions in place. Retail is only allowed curbside or in-store pickups.
The news of the possible regional reopening came two days after Chautauqua County Executive PJ Wendel announced that Chautauqua County was joining Allegany and Cattaraugus Counties in requesting that the state allow them to create a subregion for reopening.
On Friday Wendel said all three counties were meeting the seven metrics required for reopening to begin – but due to the numbers coming out of Erie County, the region wasn’t able to reopen. Also on Friday five other regions in the state were given the go ahead to begin Phase 1.
Wendel told WRFA on Thursday that the governor’s office was receptive to the idea of letting some counties in the region open before others, but so far it has not indicated that it will allow it to take place.
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