Governor Mike Dunleavy met with the Governors of all 49 other states to discuss President Donald Trump’s guidelines for returning each state’s economy to a state of normalcy. The governor offered details during a Thursday evening press conference held to discuss the state of COVID-19 in Alaska.
He said that the group of 50 governors met on a conference call, discussing how COVID-19 impacted each respective state: “We had a meeting today with the White House. All of the governors were invited to be on this teleconference, and basically what the President talked about was rolling out some guidelines – guidelines based upon the discussions he’s had with his cabinet, health officials, CDC, other experts, as well as folks in the business world and economists. A lot of what was rolled out is similar to what we’re all talking about. There was nothing new – when I say nothing new, we’re all talking about the same science, the same virus, how that virus manifests itself and how that virus impacts cities and states.”
State governors have been given the authority to make decisions about their state’s safety guidelines, according to President Donald Trump on Thursday. The President presented a ‘three phase’ plan to allow governors to open up economic sectors in each state gradually, saying that the difference of every state means that the governors should make key decisions: “Governors will be empowered to tailor an approach that meets the diverse circumstances of their own states. Every state is very different. They’re all beautiful, we love ’em all, but they’re very, very different. If they need to remain closed, we will allow them to do that, and if they believe it is time to re-open, we will provide them the freedom and guidance to accomplish that task and very, very quickly, depending on what they want to do. This is a gradual process, as the case-load in a state continues to go down, restrictions can continue to be eased and come off.”
According to Governor Dunleavy, the group of governors discussed how COVID-19 has impacted each of their states, but noted that many of the suggestions have already been acted upon in Alaska via health mandates and advisories.
Alaska has begun to open up sectors of the economy, such as the medical sector and the food service sector. When making changes, the Governor pledges to monitor the results closely and react promptly, if needed: “We want to do this as quickly as possible, but it’s very important that not at the expense of the health of Alaskans. We will constantly be looking at these metrics, constantly be looking at this data. As we open up parts of the economy, the moment we see something that is a spike, a cluster, then we’re going to act very quickly.”
The Governor said that his administration has had strong conversations with a number of sectors from the economy, and that he feels optimistic about the progress being made to open things up. He added that the state is building up its capacity for testing Alaskans, then tracking the interactions made by positive cases to see who they were in contact with, followed by isolating those individuals.
Despite the overall optimistic tone towards re-opening the economy on a gradual scale, Governor Dunleavy expects some things to change forever: “We’re gonna be washing our hands a lot more than we ever did. We’re gonna be wiping down surfaces a lot more than we ever did. We’re gonna see a lot more masks than you ever have. That’s gonna be commonplace. I think you’ll see that more among workers in businesses, and you’ll see that with customers going into areas where there’s mixing, there’s crowds. Stores, for example. So, we’ll continue to work through that.”
