State and Meck Co. Officials Eye Strategies For Opening Businesses

CHARLOTTE, NC –  The next two weeks will be critical in ensuring that North Carolina continues to head in a positive direction and determine when and how businesses will be able to bounce back, that’s the message from State Health Director Mandy Cohen. 

“Our efforts to stay at home are working. It is slowing the spread,” said Cohen on Tuesday. 

“I don’t see a peak at this moment in time. It doesn’t mean we see a surge either,” continued Cohen. 

As state health experts monitor the daily numbers, Governor Roy Cooper says there is a focus on when and how to loosen restrictions. 

“We have a team examining how North Carolina can emerge with the right practices in place to keep us healthy and strong. And ready to jump-start our economy,” said Cooper on Monday. 

He says his office is exploring ways to modify executive orders morning forward while continuing to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. 

“Wholesale lifting of those orders would be a catastrophe,” said Cooper. 

“We believe that it’s time to end the shutdown and reopen our state for business,” said Ashley Smith. 

Smith is the co-founder of Reopen NC. On Tuesday, she and dozens of others protested in Raleigh. Calling for businesses to reopen by May 1st. 

She says with more than half a million people applying for unemployment, an economic crisis will be unavoidable if things don’t open in the coming weeks. 

“May 1st can’t come soon enough for many many people who are barely hanging on right now,” said Smith. 

In Mecklenburg County, plans are also being discussed for how to get people back to work. But County  Manager Dena Diorio says it won’t be quick. 

“It’s not going to be that we’re going to flip the switch and everything will be back to normal. It will have to be a phased approach to how we lift those restrictions and where we lift those restrictions,” said Diorio. 

Diorio says the much-anticipated peak of the curve in cases and deaths may not hit until June. But that doesn’t mean restrictions will stay in place that long.