Midwestern Governors Announce Coordinated Reopening After Coronavirus

In a move similar to the governors on the East and West Coast of America, seven Midwestern governors announce their states will coordinate the reopening of their economies after much of the world’s nonessential businesses have been shut down due to coronavirus restrictions. The group of states includes Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky.

Governors of Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky say they will coordinate to reopen the Midwest regional economy. https://t.co/QNXXmAyKWe

— CNN (@CNN) April 16, 2020

The governors will focus on determining the right time to reopen the states based on several factors, including sustained control of new infection and hospitalization rates, enhanced testing and tracing capabilities, and adequate health care capacity.

For the economy to begin reopening and social distancing measures to be lifted, a number of things need to happen. Health experts say that improvements in rapid testing, contract tracing, patient isolation, hospital capacity, and finding effective treatments will be key in containing the coronavirus pandemic while restarting society. Finding future centers of the outbreak and quickly containing them is how society will be able to get back to normal.

Meanwhile, General Electric and Ford are working to produce 50,000 ventilators for the US government announced federal officials. A Ford spokesman said that the production of the ventilators will be done at-cost. GM also said it would not be profiting from its ventilator production.