Gov. Phil Murphy on Monday laid out a "road map" for restarting New Jersey's economy with a series of public health benchmarks that indicate the state is many weeks away from returning to any semblance of normal life.

Reopening is still an aspirational prospect and the stay-at-home order Murphy issued five weeks ago will remain in effect "until further notice," he said. Given the sustained deaths and hospitalizations related to COVID-19 and the lag in testing capacity, Murphy acknowledged that he doesn't know when the state will be able to "start this journey" of reopening.

"We will move as quickly as we can, but as safely as we must," Murphy said in his daily briefing in Trenton. "Even as we work to put New Jersey back on the road of progress and prosperity, we know that this war is still far from over," he added.

That is evident in the grim statistics Murphy ticks off each day. New Jersey reported another 106 residents lost Monday, bringing the death toll from COVID-19 to 6,044. There were another 2,146 positive tests reported, bringing that total to 111,188.

Officials are seeing a "slight" decline in hospitalizations in North Jersey, a flattening in the central part of the state and a "slight uptick" in the south, health commissioner Judith Persichilli said, indicating the social distancing measures are working as intended.

"It's definitely a positive trend," said Dr. Ed Lifshitz, the health department's communicable disease service medical director. "Overall the state is definitely trending in the right way."

What NJ needs in order to reopen

The "Road Back" blueprint Murphy unveiled Monday added little to what he and public health experts have said for the last several weeks about what is needed to be able to start reopening the state.

The governor has said improving testing and contract tracing, the detective work of finding out who an infected person interacted with, must come before the state's economic life returns to normal.

Murphy said Monday, as he did last week, that testing must be doubled, "at the least," and the results must come faster than the current time frame of about seven days. Only about 2% of the state's population has been tested for the coronavirus, leaving an untold number of asymptomatic people spreading the disease.

Murphy said he's confident the state will be able to double its testing by the end of May, which would suggest a reopening will not happen before then. He is expected to make a decision by May 15 on whether to reopen schools for the last several weeks of the academic year, and he said on CNBC "there is a chance" they could.

The state also needs to see a trend of at least 14 days of decreased positive tests and hospitalizations, he said. And the state must develop a plan to isolate or quarantine those who get the coronavirus after re-opening, Murphy said.

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Just as critical, there must be a "robust" contact tracing program that will require between 15 and 81 people to do that detective work for every 100,000 residents. That means New Jersey will need between 1,300 and 7,000 contact tracers, he said. The state is in talks with a "handful" of technology companies as well, including Google and Salesforce, to develop contact tracing tools.

But the steps in Murphy's blueprint were known essentials to the gradual return to a society in which people are free to roam parks and dine inside a restaurant. Pressed for specifics on how and when New Jersey would get to that point, Murphy kept his responses vague but said even into the summer he anticipates social distancing measures and capacity restrictions to stay in place.

"Today, Governor Murphy laid out his 'Road Back to Economic Health,' which was long, winding and nothing new: reduce COVID cases, test, trace, & isolate," Doug Steinhardt, chairman of the state Republican Party, said in a statement urging Murphy to enact fiscal measures to avoid an economic collapse.

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In recent days governors in neighboring states have rolled out similar plans to ease out of the restrictions put in place to prevent the contagious virus from spreading across the region. The plans come with plenty of caveats.

On Sunday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York announced the phased re-opening of some low-risk businesses, beginning with manufacturing and construction, on May 15. More than 16,000 New York residents had died from the virus as of Sunday.

Additional businesses could be opened in two-week phases as long as the local and regional rate of COVID-19 hospitalizations declines. The phased re-opening plan would begin upstate, far from New York City, which is the epicenter of the virus in the United States.

Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania last week announced a color-coded plan, with green, yellow and red levels of restrictions. Red indicates the most extreme restrictions, including the current stay-at-home order and business closures, while green is the least restrictive. Key to the re-opening plan is having fewer than 50 cases per 100,000 individuals over the course of 14 days.

Wolf said by May 8 he hoped to see some areas in northwest and north-central Pennsylvania loosen some restrictions, easing into the yellow phase, which allows gatherings of 25 people but continues closures of schools, eat-in restaurants and entertainment venues.

Those states, along with New Jersey, are part of a seven-state coalition planning to reopen in a coordinated way.

Stacey Barchenger is a reporter in the New Jersey Statehouse. For unlimited access to her work covering New Jersey’s policymakers and political power structure, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: sbarchenger@gannettnj.com Twitter: @sbarchenger