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Gov. Kevin Stitt said Friday that restaurants and some other businesses currently deemed nonessential may begin opening in early May and that he was working with churches on a timeline for resuming services.

"The restaurants that are working up their plans — it will look a little different at first," Stitt said at a news conference in Oklahoma City. "We’re going to have tables spaced out, etcetera, etcetera, and then we’ll continue to monitor and it’ll just over time get back to normal.

"So I can’t give you an exact timeline but we will start stepping back into a more normal way of life sometime in the month of May and early May, hopefully."

Jim Hopper, president and CEO of the Oklahoma Restaurant Association, said Friday, "At the governor's request we have shared with him some ideas about what it would take to get restaurants up and running when he announces that the time is right to do that.