Boston Mayor Marty Walsh walks out of City Hall for a press conference on April 17. Photo by John Wilcox | Boston Mayor's Office / File
Editor’s Note: Gov. Charlie Baker Tuesday afternoon extended the state’s coronavirus state of emergency through May 18.
Massachusetts’ COVID-19 case count may be plateauing, but the state’s largest city “will not reopen on May 4,” the date that Gov. Charlie Baker’s non-essential business closure order and a statewide stay-at-home advisory are set to expire, Mayor Marty Walsh said Monday.
Baker hasn’t said if he’ll extend the order.
Boston officials are working on a “recovery framework” that will lay out short, medium and long-term steps to bounce back from the coronavirus pandemic and the pause it has put on economic activity. Walsh said there’s “never a moment” when officials do not think about the financial hardships people and businesses are facing, but that he has “serious concerns if we start relaxing some of the measures we’ve taken in Boston and across the commonwealth on May 4.”
“There is no question that May 4 is too early,” he said.
The recovery framework will include public health interventions aimed at minimizing the spread of COVID-19 until a vaccine or treatment becomes available, Walsh said during a livestreamed briefing.
“We are not going to sit back and wait for the coronavirus to go away before we take the next steps, but we are going to approach it very thoughtfully,” Walsh said. “We should never put ourselves in a position where we move too quickly and undo the progress that’s been made.”
There were 8,159 cases of COVID-19 in Boston as of Sunday and 302 deaths, and Walsh said Boston is “still in the peak of the outbreak.” Gov. Charlie Baker said Monday the data might be starting to show that the coronavirus’s spread has “plateaued.”
“The trend data remains reasonably high,” Baker said. “But obviously whatever decision we make needs to come with a little thought and a plan behind it, so we’ll probably put that out later this week.”
Regardless of when the state begins to reopen its economy, social distancing will be with us through the summer, according to the White House coronavirus response coordinator, who on Sunday also explained Vice President Mike Pence’s assertion that by Memorial Day “we will largely have this coronavirus epidemic behind us.”
During an appearance on “Meet the Press” with Chuck Todd, Dr. Deborah Birx said, “Social distancing will be with us through the summer to really ensure that we protect one another as we move through these phases.”
She said Pence’s Memorial Day timeline is based on models and data showing how places like Louisiana, Houston and Detroit have hit their virus peak and are coming down.
“It gives us great hope when you project out Boston and Chicago and certainly the New York metro, which were all very still focused on,” she said.
Pressed for concerns about four states moving to reopen economic activity without complying with optional federal guidelines, Birx talked about how the virus is affecting different areas of the country, and different parts of states, unevenly. She said she’s had good conversations with governors.
“They understand the risk, and they talk about this not as turning on a light-switch but slowly turning up the dimmer,” Birx said. “Very slowly.”
