PHOENIX – A Maricopa County health official said Friday that Arizona would need to see multiple weeks of decreased hospitalizations for her to feel comfortable about reopening the state.

“We just have to take our time so we don’t accidentally pull back too fast and see a rapid increase again,” Dr. Rebecca Sunenshine, the county’s medical director for public health, told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Gaydos and Chad on Friday.

On Wednesday, Maricopa County public health officials said that the hospitalization curve from coronavirus cases has been flattening in the county.

Sunenshine said the hospitalization trend in the county has been flat for almost a full week.

On Friday, Arizona had a total of 4,507 cases and 169 deaths with 49,230 tests having been given. Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county, has 2,404 of those cases.

There haven’t been more than 13 daily coronavirus hospitalizations in Maricopa County in the last six days of data collection, which was last reported Sunday.

“When we do get things going again, we may have to phase in an approach where we don’t just completely open up everything back to normal all at once but we try to open things up with social distancing in place so that we can do it gradually and see if there are increased cases,” Sunenshine said.

“If there are increased cases with the social distancing in place, then we know we can’t continue to move further down to the next phase.”

On Thursday, President Donald Trump and the coronavirus task force released information for the governors about how to slowly reopen the economy through a 3-phase plan.

The full restrictions likely wouldn’t be relaxed until there is a vaccine in place, which would take about a year.

“It might look like sitting a couple of seats away from one another other in a movie theatre or maybe it might be sitting at every other table in a restaurant or maybe it might be just using the outside patio when we know there could be more distance,” Sunenshine said.

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