As New York enacted a slew of reopening measures this week — despite warnings from the former FDA director and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio — New Jersey is taking a more cautious approach, seeing as per-capita cases within its borders are at a national high.
Gov. Phil Murphy said Monday that more reopenings in his state are unlikely in the short term.
New Jersey has the third-highest average of daily new cases in the country, but the most new cases per 100,000 residents.
The state has seen an 8 percent increase in new infections from last week, and a 24 percent increase compared to one month ago.
"My guess is we won't be opening up further capacities for some time now because of the case load," Murphy told CNN.
While Murphy is staying firm on measures to reboot the state's economy, he's said it's the state's goal to have 85 percent of its students back in school for in-person learning by the end of the school year.
The governor has also relaxed restrictions on visitations of residents at long-term care facilities and nursing homes. The NJ Department of Health is allowing for in-person visits, regardless of vaccination status, as long as spread is low in the region in which the facility is located.
Residents and visitors must wear face masks, in all cases.
With New York ramping up its reopening, despite concern over virus variants, Mayor de Blasio is preaching caution.
New York is second in the country in new virus cases per 100,000 residents. Despite that distinction, indoor fitness classes resumed Monday with restrictions, outdoor gathering limits increased, cluster zones were removed and in-person learning returned at public high schools in the city.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a new release Sunday that his state is "in a race to get as many New Yorkers vaccinated as possible before the variants can disrupt the progress we've made, but infection rate is also a function of our actions."
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