President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus in the Rose Garden of the White House, Tuesday, April 14, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The time has come, as President Donald Trump said on Tuesday, to get the country re-opened.

We can’t go much longer without irreparable harm to the economy if we aren’t there already.

Already, many businesses have gone under and millions have been thrown out of work. If we can get those back up soon, we can get some of those businesses and jobs back.

The President is working on a blueprint for re-opening for all 50 states to start employing on May 1, but it’s going to be based on what they believe is the safest plan, a phased-in approach depending on the conditions in each state. This is a draft plan so it’s important to note, it isn’t finalized yet, but it lays out pretty logical parameters.

From The Hill:

The Washington Post obtained the draft executive summary of the plan, which it reported had been worked on by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

While no plan has been finalized or announced, the draft plan calls for a step-by-step reopening of the country, and says officials should be ready to retighten social distancing measures if conditions worsen.

The plan does not give firm dates for re-openings, but says some areas with the least amount of virus transmission could go first starting “not before May 1.”

It also makes clear that states and localities will make the decision on reopening their areas.

“Decisions on reopening and, alternatively, on intensifying mitigation will be made at the local and state level with guidance and support from the Federal level,” the document states.

According to the Washington Post:

The plan lays out three-phases: Preparing the nation to reopen with a national communication campaign and community readiness assessment until May 1. Then, the effort, through May 15, would involve ramping up manufacturing of testing kits and personal protective equipment and increasing emergency funding. Then staged reopenings would begin, depending on local conditions.

The first priority is to open schools and childcare facilities, with careful monitoring, so that they can enable people to go back to work.

Any locality is going to have to meet certain parameters in order to be able to reopen.

·Incidence of infection is “genuinely low.”
·A “well functioning” monitoring system capable of “promptly detecting any increase in incidence” of infection.
·A public health system that is “reacting robustly” to all cases of covid-19 and has surge capacity to react to an increase in cases.
·A health system that has enough inpatient beds and staffing to rapidly scale up and deal with a surge in cases.

Some areas with more of an issue might have to take longer  — until a vaccine or some level of communal immunity is reached and the CDC wants to have a “COVID-19 Response Corps” to help local officials to track the virus.