By: Michael Mandarino, Follow South Jersey Managing Editor
TRENTON, N.J. — On Monday afternoon, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy will make another “major” announcement regarding his state’s reopening from the COVID-19 pandemic. Gov. Murphy teased the announcement on Sunday via his official Twitter account.
The governor made his first “major” announcement pertaining to reopening last Monday, when he expanded capacity limits for large venues to 50% and increased New Jersey’s general outdoor gathering limit to 500 people. The changes Gov. Murphy outlined during last week’s announcement will take effect on May 10 — one week from today.
You’ll be able to watch today’s announcement on Gov. Murphy’s social media platforms, including his official YouTube account.
“With our COVID metrics decisively trending in the right direction, I will make a major announcement on easing restrictions and ramping up our vaccinations,” Gov. Murphy said on Twitter Sunday afternoon.
Over the weekend, New Jersey crossed the 7,000,000-milestone of COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in the state. As of Monday morning, the state’s COVID-19 dashboard reported a total of 7,135,235 doses administered statewide and 3,112,697 people who are fully inoculated after receiving their second Pfizer or Moderna dose (or the single-shot Johnson & Johnson model). The state also reported that 4,278,315 residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine models.
New Jersey was 66.2% of the way to reaching its goal of 4.7 million adult residents being fully inoculated by the beginning of summer as of Monday morning. In addition to its progress made on the vaccination front, the state’s COVID-19 case numbers are trending in the right direction. New Jersey reported only 1,048 new positive COVID-19 tests statewide on Sunday — a figure that will bring the state’s seven-day average down further and shows tangible progress made in fighting the pandemic.
The state’s rate of COVID-19 transmission was 0.46 as of Sunday and 0.54 as of Saturday — the lowest figures since it was at 0.6 in May of last year. For reference, any rate of transmission figure less than 1 shows that each new COVID-19 case is, on average, leading to less than one additional case, which means that the outbreak of COVID-19 is slowing down in New Jersey.
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