Ohio is participating in a "balancing act" as it takes its initial steps toward reopening, Gov. Mike DeWine said Monday, but he does believe that the state can be safe while restarting its economy.
"Today, we start back with manufacturing," the Republican governor said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "Of course, a lot of manufacturing was already deemed essential. What we have now is a lot more testing than we had before."
Contact tracing will also be a big part of the reopening, said DeWine, and the business leaders who have been serving in a council of advisers have suggested good business practices.
"For example, they said that every employee in the companies they're opening today and, frankly, the ones already open, every employee should wear a mask," said the governor. "Every employee, of course, should have the distancing. Barriers should be built when the distancing could not actually occur. These are basic things that wouldn't shock anybody, I don't think."
He said it's also important for businesses to check with each employee every day to see how their health is doing.
DeWine denied that the process is moving too fast, but stressed that the state of Ohio wants its residents to feel safe because if they don't, they won't leave their homes.
Meanwhile, the state's hospitalizations aren't going down dramatically, but they are dropping, said the governor.
As of Monday afternoon, just under 20,000 people in Ohio had been diagnosed with COVID-19, with 1,038 deaths confirmed.
Meanwhile, the governor said he's urging residents to continue social distancing efforts, even if he did back away from a rule requiring all shoppers to wear masks.
"It's those things that Ohioans have been doing," he said. "At the same time, we will work to get the economy back."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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