In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, non-essential businesses across the United States faced executive orders by state Governors instructing them to close or significantly limit all in-person operations.
States are now considering how best to reopen their economies, balancing the desire to permit businesses to operate with the need to continue to slow the spread of COVID-19. The federal government has unveiled its Guidelines for Opening Up America Again, a three-phased approach intended to help state and local officials determine when and how to reopen their economies while continuing to protect Americans from the spread of COVID-19.
A phased approach is one in which restrictions are modified in phases, gradually moving towards resuming business as usual with no particular COVID-19 related restrictions. Such approaches often rely on gating criteria to establish when it is time to move to the next phase, for example whether COVID-19 related symptoms and confirmed cases have decreased, whether hospitals are capable of treating their patients without relying on crisis care, and whether sufficient testing is available. Individual states have also begun issuing and enacting their own proposed guidelines and plans, many of which follow the federal government’s three-phased approach.
Read more on the Federal and State Reopening Guidelines. This resource will be updated as additional guidelines are issued.