Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker’s office confirmed that he joined discussions with governors across the Northeast on a possible regional reopening plan after the coronavirus surge.

“The Baker-Polito Administration is in touch with other states in the region including New York and looks forward to participating in discussions with experts regarding the ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic," Terry MacCormack, a Baker spokesman said in a statement.

The governor’s primary focus, however, is on testing, bed capacity and personal protective equipment, MacCormack added.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo tweeted Monday afternoon that Massachusetts was one of several states involved in a regional effort to reopen after the worst of COVID-19 passes.

Cuomo had said earlier Monday that the governors of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Delaware agreed to work together to plan a reopening of the region’s economies, schools, agencies and other entities that closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Cuomo said those states would “study the data, study the research, study the experience of other countries, and give us guidelines and parameters to go forward," the New York Times reported before Massachusetts’ involvement was publicized.

The council will coordinate with a health expert, an economic development expert and each state’s chief of staff to develop a regional plan to gradually lift the states’ stay-at-home advisories while avoiding spreading the virus, according to a news release from Cuomo’s office published Monday night.

With Massachusetts, those seven states have reported more than 328,000 coronavirus cases and more than 14,000 deaths, more than half of the national total for both.

Baker first ordered schools and non-essential businesses to close in mid-March and then ordered daycares to close until April. He extended those orders until May 4.

It is unclear at this point whether those orders will in fact lift on May 4. The Republican governor has repeatedly said he won’t go into reopening plans because he doesn’t want people to lose sight of the need to stay home during the surge, which was believed to have started Friday and may last until April 20.

“I don’t want people to get ahead of themselves on this one,” Baker said during a news conference at the Massachusetts State House last week.

Based on the state’s projections, Massachusetts could see between 47,000 and 172,000 coronavirus cases during the surge, resulting in thousands of deaths.

As of Monday afternoon, 844 people have died of the coronavirus and 26,867 have tested positive, up by 1,392 a day earlier, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

On Monday, Baker said a “soft opening” of different agencies and businesses would depend whether the peak has passed, which businesses could safely reopen without violating “social distancing” parameters and how slowly the virus is spreading.

A report on the World Health Organization’s Joint Mission on COVID-19 in China, issued in late February, states the rate of spread in and around Wuhan was between 2 and 2.5 on the R0 scale, meaning that one carrier could pass on the coronavirus to two or more people. Baker said on Monday the rate was even higher in some areas in the U.S., prompting officials to shut down businesses and other parts of public life.

Baker said one indicator that Massachusetts is past the surge is if the rate of spread falls to a 1 on the R0 scale, meaning one carrier might pass the virus to one other person. The governor said the state will need to conduct more testing before it can make a determination.

“Almost everybody who talks about this says there needs to be a ton of testing going on,” Baker said. “We’re a Top 10 tester on a per-capita basis, but if you were to say to any of us here, are we doing enough testing? We would say no.”

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