{"id":10823,"date":"2026-05-30T02:10:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T02:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/new-york-governor-cuomo-suggests-business-reopening-could-occur-as-early-as-may-15-2020\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T02:10:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T02:10:21","slug":"new-york-governor-cuomo-suggests-business-reopening-could-occur-as-early-as-may-15-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/new-york-governor-cuomo-suggests-business-reopening-could-occur-as-early-as-may-15-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Governor Cuomo Suggests Business Reopening Could Occur As Early As May 15, 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div id=\"contentSummaryCollapse\" style=\"--intro-p-height: 10.3125rem;\">\n<div class=\"inner-collapse\">\n<p>On May 4, 2020, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo provided additional detail on previously issued guidelines for the phased, regional reopening of New York businesses.\u00a0Gov. Cuomo indicated that New York will apply a data-driven reopening methodology under which phased reopening decisions will be continuously evaluated based on a variety of statistical metrics.\u00a0New York\u2019s guidance is summarized below, and our memorandum, <strong>Return-to-Work Considerations for Employers<\/strong>, provides additional considerations for employers as they develop plans to reopen workplaces.<br \/>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reopening.\u00a0<\/strong>New York will reopen businesses under a phased, regional reopening process.\u00a0Gov. Cuomo said that \u201cMay 15 is a possible reopening\u201d start date, which is when the <strong>New York State on PAUSE<\/strong> executive order is currently set to expire.\u00a0Assuming the New York State on PAUSE executive order is not extended, New York reopening decisions will consider COVID-19-related statistics that target four key metrics: (i)\u00a0the number of new infections; (ii)\u00a0healthcare system capacity; (iii)\u00a0diagnostic testing capacity; and (iv)\u00a0contact tracing capacity.\u00a0These key metrics\u2014and consequently, reopening decisions\u2014will be analyzed for each New York region.\u00a0The gating metrics for a region to reopen and stay open are below.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Number of New Infections.\u00a0<\/strong>Regions must report:\n<ul>\n<li>14 days of continuous decline in total COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths on a 3-day rolling average. For regions with \u201cfew\u201d COVID-19 cases currently, the region cannot exceed 15 new COVID-19 cases or 5 new COVID-19 deaths on a 3-day rolling average.<\/li>\n<li>Fewer than 2 new COVID-19 patients admitted per 100,000 residents per day.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Healthcare Capacity.<\/strong>\u00a0Regions must have:\n<ul>\n<li>At least 30% of total hospital and ICU beds available.<\/li>\n<li>For every hospital, at least 90 days of personal protective equipment stockpiled.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Diagnostic Testing Capacity.\u00a0<\/strong>Regions must:\n<ul>\n<li>Conduct 30 COVID-19 tests for every 1,000 residents per month.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Contact Tracing Capacity.\u00a0<\/strong>Regions must:\n<ul>\n<li>Have at least 30 contact tracers for every 100,000 residents.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If a region meets the above criteria, and the COVID-19 rate of transmission (also referred to as R<sub>0<\/sub>) is below 1.0, the region will be reopened in phases.\u00a0If the COVID-19 rate of transmission increases above 1.1, reopening will be halted.\u00a0 Reopening will be phased, using a \u201crisk versus reward\u201d analysis which balances the risk of infection with the economic benefit of reopening a sector of businesses.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Phase 1.<\/strong>\u00a0Phase 1 will include construction, manufacturing, and select retail businesses that can accommodate curbside pickup.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Phase 2.<\/strong>\u00a0Phase 2 will include professional services, finance and insurance, retail, administrative support, and real estate\/rental leasing businesses.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Phase 3.<\/strong>\u00a0Phase 3 will include restaurants, food services, and hotels and accommodation businesses.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Phase 4.<\/strong>\u00a0Phase 4 will include arts, entertainment, recreation and education.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Gov. Cuomo indicated that businesses will need to \u201creimagine\u201d how to conduct business, by implementing personnel, workplace, and process changes such as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Adjusting workplace hours and shift design;<\/li>\n<li>Social distancing;<\/li>\n<li>Reducing non-essential travel;<\/li>\n<li>Requiring masks if in frequent contact with others;<\/li>\n<li>Implementing strict cleaning and sanitation standards;<\/li>\n<li>Conducting continuous health screenings to allow employees to enter the workplace;<\/li>\n<li>Conducting continuous tracing, tracking and reporting of COVID-19 cases; and<\/li>\n<li>Taking steps to reduce liability.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>High Risk Regions.\u00a0<\/strong>Based on the above reopening criteria, \u201chigh risk\u201d regions in New York State which may be less likely to quickly reopen currently include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Western New York (including Buffalo);<\/li>\n<li>Capital District (including Albany);<\/li>\n<li>Mid-Hudson (including Westchester);<\/li>\n<li>Long Island; and<\/li>\n<li>New York City.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>New York City.\u00a0<\/strong>New York City currently fails to meet the reopening criteria for (i)\u00a0new hospitalizations per 100,000 residents (5.41); (ii)\u00a0share of hospital beds available (26%); and (iii)\u00a0share of ICU beds available (21%).\u00a0 Gov. Cuomo indicated that it could be a significant amount of time before certain regions, such as New York City and Long Island, may be able to open, saying, \u201cIf upstate has to wait for downstate to be ready, they\u2019re going to be waiting a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Coronavirus situation is fluid, and laws are changing rapidly.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On May 4, 2020, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo provided additional detail on previously issued guidelines for the phased, regional reopening of New York businesses.\u00a0Gov. Cuomo indicated that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[254,4793,176,6249,8062,3902,8061,326],"class_list":["post-10823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-business","tag-cuomo","tag-early","tag-governor","tag-occur","tag-reopening","tag-suggests","tag-york"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}