Day 35 – Stay Home Order Eased
More than 20,000 mostly small manufacturing and warehousing Minnesota businesses started opening Monday April 27.
Some non-essential businesses like manufacturing and warehousing in Minnesota & around the country started re-opening beginning Monday. All businesses except ‘essential’ have remained closed for almost a month after the Gov Tim Walz’s stay-at-home order. Last Thursday, Gov Walz relaxed his stay-at-home order slightly allowing some non-essential businesses re-open under state’s guidelines. Businesses were required to develop COVID-19 safety plans before reopening.
Under the state’s guidelines, companies that reopen need to have a plan to enforce social distancing and good hygiene to prevent the introduction and spread of the virus in the workplace.
The MPR News
The Tribune writes that ‘Walz gained backing from the business community for his stance, and for evaluating businesses on individual factors such as the amount of worker and client foot traffic that could spread the coronavirus’.
Stay-at-Home Order Ends May 4
The Minnesota ‘Stay-at-Home order’ had began on March 25 and would end on May 4. The Gov Walz is expected to make his decision whether to extend or not by the middle of this week.
My pledge to Minnesotans is to continue to transparently show how we’re thinking through these things, and then try and give as much lead time as possible.
Gov Tim Walz (source: The Star Tribune)
Gov Walz need to balance the rising death and COVID-19 case counts against the economic damage caused by the pandemic and the stay-at-home order, writes the Tribune.
States Start Re-opening
Almost 97% of the US populations under state lock down orders, several other states began plans to reopen. According to the CNN tally, seven states (Arkansas, Colorado, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana & Tennessee) have started reopening some businesses stating Monday. Georgia & Oklahoma allowed barber shops and hair salons, tattoo parlors, gyms and bowling alleys were allowed reopen starting last Friday, according to the CNN Updates.
Coronavirus Pandemic Watch
According to the MDH latest tally (as of April 28, 11 a.m.) the confirmed COVID-19 cases in Minnesota are 4,181 (out of 63,829 tested) with 301 deaths. According to Johns Hopkins database (as of April 28, 4:00 p.m.) there are 1,003,328 confirmed covid19 infection with 57,533 deaths. Globally the covid19 virus has infected 3,090,844 with 215,063 deaths.