When can Long Island start phased reopening? The region must first overcome these three hurdles

While the Long Island region is currently meeting five of the seven benchmarks the state requires to allow the region to begin phase one of the four-phase reopening plan established by the state, it remains uncertain when the region may get a green light.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone yesterday said he would not speculate on a date when the region would be ready to reopen but was focusing on meeting the metrics set by the state.

But Nassau County Executive Laura Curran on Friday it could take another seven weeks before the region meets all seven benchmarks required to begin the four-phase reopening process.

“Just to give you rough estimate, our back-of-the-envelope number, we could get there probably by the end of June,” Curran said during a press conference Friday.

That timeline could be devastating to Suffolk’s tourism economy, since the state requires a minimum of 14 days at each phase and it would take a at least eight weeks to progress through all four reopening phases. Restaurants and food services would not reopen until phase three. Arts, entertainment and recreation would not reopen until phase four.

Attractions that draw people from outside the region will not be allowed to open as long as the coronavirus is a threat, according to the “NY Forward” plan published by the state yesterday.

“While people should be able to have fun, facilities or events that attract hundreds of people from outside the region pose a significant public health danger as we try to carefully reopen. These places should be closed and events should continue to be postponed or cancelled until the threat of COVID-19 has subsided,” the NY Forward plan says.

Bellone said he has been in conversation with the state and local leaders about opening up outdoor recreation opportunities in Suffolk before the region is eligible for phase-one reopening.

The Long Island region currently meets five of the seven benchmarks, according to state officials.

The seven benchmarks measure rates of new hospitalizations – both total and adjusted for population size – as well as hospital fatalities and hospital capacity.

Long Island still has too many new hospitalizations each day when adjusted for population size, and it does not yet meet the state’s requirement for a 14-day decline in hospital deaths, according to the governor’s office.

But another requirement for reopening is meeting certain thresholds in testing and contact tracing capabilities – at least 30 residents tested per month for every 1,000 residents, and at least 30 contact tracers per 100,000 residents.

The need to hire and deploy a small army of the “contact tracers” presents a major hurdle for the heavily populated region. Suffolk needs to have 450 contact tracers — in addition to its existing staff, Bellone said yesterday — to meet the state’s metric of 30 tracers per 100,000 people — for the county’s population of nearly 1.5 million. Nassau, with its population of nearly 1.4 million has a similar chore.

“It’s literally hundreds of people who have to be vetted and hired and trained to do this work that is critical for us to begin that reopening phase safely,” Bellone said yesterday.

The county executive could not say yesterday how many contact tracers have already been hired.

“We’re working with the Bloomberg team,” he said, referring to an effort led by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg
and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to recruit, interview and train contact tracers. The governor announced the launch of the program on April 30.

“They’re focused on the recruitment process right now — vetting through applications right now and looking to hire people as quickly as possible and train them as well,” Bellone said.

“The process began about a week ago,” he said.

The Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization recommend that robust contact tracing programs be in place before local governments consider easing restrictions.

According to the “New York Forward” plan released yesterday by the state, contact tracers will interview people who are diagnosed with COVID-19 and attempt to identify everyone the patient has come into contact with during the 14 days before their diagnosis. Tracers will then notify and interview each of the contacts and instruct them to self-quarantine for 14 days. The tracers monitor the contacts via text for the duration of their quarantine to see if they are showing any symptoms.
Tracers will also work with any individuals being traced who need social services assistance, like housing, food or medicine, during their quarantine.

The governor announced yesterday that three upstate regions — the Finger Lakes, Mohawk Valley and the Southern Tier — are eligible to begin the phased reopening process when the NY Pause order expires on Friday.

New York State has launched a regional dashboard showing each region’s status.

Bellone said the the county would also publish a dashboard on its website to show the county’s progress in meeting the benchmarks for the Long Island region.

Suffolk County has not been able to obtain current hospitalization data in a timely manner since last week. The Health Emergency Response Data System (HERDS) “continues to be down,” Bellone said yesterday, when he reported data for May 8 and 9. Typically the county reports data within 24 hours.

Total hospitalizations continue to decline in Suffolk. Yesterday the county reported a decline of 113 patients for May 8 and 9. Bellone said the 590 COVID patients hospitalized as of May 9 puts the county at “at 70% exactly, which is the number we need to be at to hit that hospitalization metric.”

But the region must maintain a 70% hospital bed capacity even after the state allows elective surgeries to resume — they are still prohibited. So, while this metric is currently met, this could change in the future.

One hundred, fifty-three people were discharged from Suffolk hospitals since Saturday, Bellone said.

The new infection rate, measured by the ratio of positive diagnostic tests to the number of tests administered, has fallen to 10%, according to Suffolk County Health Commissioner Dr. Gregson Pigott. That represents a significant decrease from infection rates a few weeks ago.

Suffolk County had 41,213 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of last night. Confirmed cases in Riverhead have now reached 618, with 395 in Southold, 899 in Southampton, 260 in East Hampton and eight in Shelter Island. Suffolk’s five western towns have been much harder hit: 11,786 in Islip, 8,973 in Brookhaven, 6,694 in Babylon, 4,920 in Huntington and 2,363 in Smithtown.

Another 22 Suffolk residents died of COVID-19, Bellone said. Suffolk’s coronavirus death toll as of Sunday was 1,689 people, 1,639 of whom were Suffolk residents.

Overall, 21,640 New Yorkers had succumbed to the disease as of Sunday, according to data published by the State Department of Health.

There are currently 1,347,936 confirmed cases in the U.S., where 80,684 people have died and 232,733 have recovered, according to Johns Hopkins University. Worldwide, there are 4,194,326 confirmed cases and 286,669 people have died.