The Governor's office will provide guidelines this week to Virginia's businesses with the goal of reopening the economy on Friday, May 15.
Businesses will still have to operate under CDC guidelines which include social distancing and sanitation requirements. Other guidelines will include limiting the number of people in an establishment and wearing face coverings.
Guidelines for specific businesses will be announced later this week, but a few examples include: hair salons will be able to reopen, but appointments will be required; restaurants will be allowed to reopen their dining areas, but customers will have to be separated; gyms will be allowed to operate, but with fewer patrons and more cleaning.
This Phase I reopening is expected to last for about three weeks. Then the Governor will decide whether to move on to Phase II and Phase III reopenings, depending on a continued downward trend of new coronavirus cases and hospitalizations.
Gov. Northam says reopening the state's economy will be done as a whole rather than regionally, saying he wanted to keep things consistent and that opening some areas and not others could bring division.
The Virginia Health Department plans to hire 1,000 people to work as contact tracers. As testing increases, more positive cases are expected to be found, especially in people who haven't been showing symptoms.
The contact tracers will determine who the positive patient has been in contact with, and those people will be tested and asked to self-isolate for 14 days, if necessary.
More on this story from our media partner, ABC 13 - WSET.