Mid-Hudson, Long Island entering first phase of reopening

NEW YORK - New York's Mid-Hudson Valley and Long Island can expect to begin gradually reopening, meaning construction, manufacturing, and wholesale businesses can begin to reopen after Memorial Day.

Nassau, Suffolk, Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster, and Westchester Counties will take their first steps towards a return to a kind of "normalcy."

"Before you can begin construction, you have to have the staged the construction, the materials to be on site so we are doing to allow that construction staging now for Long Island and the mid-Hudson," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Friday.

However, Cuomo also said that in order to reopen, areas need to build up their corps of contact tracers, a group of people who trace and monitor the contacts of infected COVID-19 patients.

On Long Island, officials welcomed the news.

"We know how important this is, because of the economic devastation that is out there," Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone said last week. "So we are making progress towards hitting these metrics as the governor acknowledged today."

Meanwhile, in Westchester County, George Latimer announced that two of the county's beaches, at Playland Park and Croton Point Park, are opening at limited capacity as we enter the holiday weekend.

Despite the good news, however, officials across the state are urging New Yorkers to remain cautious if we want to move forward with reopening the economy.