Data for coronavirus in Minnesota is skewed due to the timing of the Easter holiday, but state officials report 70 deaths, unchanged from Sunday, and 1,650 lab-confirmed cases as of Monday.
Gov. Tim Walz Monday was again pushed on his future plans to reopen the economy.
Walz announced an extension of the peacetime state of emergency for 30 days. It’s what allows him to make the kinds of declarations about the national guard, schools and restaurants and more.
It appears the legislature will not interrupt the extension, but Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka in a statement said he’s expecting a laid-out plan from Walz soon.
Our hope is Governor Walz will soon lay out his plan to reopen schools, churches, businesses, and activities after May 4th. He clearly understands the emergency caused by COVID-19. We need to be assured he also understands the economic emergency caused by his response. #mnleg
— Paul Gazelka (@paulgazelka) April 13, 2020Walz says the virus and testing capacity are what dictate the timeline, not him, and it’s too early to say what will reopen beyond May 4.
“Yes, we all want to open up tomorrow,” Walz said in his daily media briefing. “But people will die if we do that without having things in place. It’s not a debate here about whether we need to get the economy going. Of course we do. The debate and strategy is how do you do that in a way that ensures, as this virus continues on for the next 12 months or however long it takes to get a vaccine, that we are in a place where we can weather these squalls that come in and then blow out back out again.”
He used the closure of the Smithfield Foods plant in Sioux Falls as a cautionary example.
“You allow people to go back to work, your economy shuts down anyway,” he said. “My first responsibility is to the people of Minnesota. It’s to follow the best practices on this. It’s to build coalitions around us which is the model I think the rest of the country will start to pick up and then to ramp up this testing. I’m confident that Minnesotans understand that this is about protecting their neighbors and figuring out the quickest way to get back into the economy.”
Faced with a shortage of reagents, PPE and swabs needed to complete testing, Walz says he is speaking with other Upper Midwest governors about pooling resources to do more testing on their own.
“It’s the ability to put out hot spots and return people back to work who we know have had it,” Walz said. “I can tell you we’re working with a lot of partners on this. I think you can expect or should expect us to try and make a big push at this is what we’ve been doing.”
Groups of governors on the east and west coasts are forming regional coalitions to work out when to open things back up.
Minnesota has yet to test 40,000 people since the beginning. Walz says testing 40,000 a week or 5,000 a day is ideal to bring them closer to safely returning.
“For those that keep asking, ‘What’s the plan to reopen?’ The plan to reopen is very, very clear: test, trace, isolate, open back up. And continue this until we get a vaccine.”
Walz acknowledged that sheltering in place for months at a time is not sustainable. What he’s hoping to get to is scenario 3 outlined by state researchers, where we continue physical distancing, but the most vulnerable to the virus are in a stay at home order long-term.
Walz says they’re working with businesses who have mitigation plans to determine if they can open back up, like garden centers.
In the meantime, the Office of Management and Budget is executing a rare springtime budget forecast to see how the pandemic is affecting the state’s resources. It’s normally done in November.
