TRENTON (WCBS 880) — Gov. Phil Murphy on Wednesday announced New Jersey will be loosening gathering restrictions for weddings receptions and will allow sleepaway camps to reopen this summer.
Gov. Murphy notes that the state’s COVID-19 numbers have come down significantly, which is good news for the reopening process.
On Wednesday, the governor said wedding venues can soon begin to operate a 35% of its indoor capacity, or up to 150 people for receptions – whichever number is less. Outdoor weddings can also operate with up to 150 people.
Wedding ceremonies have already been operating with the same capacity limits in the state. The new guidance will go into effect on Friday and should give people time to plan ahead for events, Murphy said.
“Indoor receptions must abide by our indoor dining guidance which requires that people eat and drink while they're seated and wear face coverings at all other times,” the governor noted.
Murphy also announced that sleepaway camps, which were closed last year amid the pandemic, can plan to reopen in several months.
“For things like this you need a long runway and for summer camps, you need a long runway and that's why we're making these decisions,” Murphy said.
The announcements came as the governor said the state is expecting an “explosion” in vaccine supply around Easter, which falls on April 4 this year.
“I believe the supplies ... not just J&J, but Pfizer and Moderna — I’m going to use a word — explode. We’ll be in a dramatically, quantumly different place,” he said.
With the vaccine supply increasing, Health Commissioner Judy Persichilli says the state should meet a goal of vaccinating 70% of the adult population, or 4.7 million people, by July.
The promise came as the state drew closer to the one-year anniversary of New Jersey’s first COVID-19 case.
“None of us could even imagine what it was we would ultimately be up against,” Murphy said of the pandemic since then.
New Jersey, along with New York, was an early epicenter for the virus, which so far has resulted in 21,052 deaths, and still New Jersey has among the highest number of deaths per 100,000 residents in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
(© 2021 WCBS 880. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)