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Baker: State will begin to re-open on our own schedule, not on some arbitrary date set elsewhere

COVID-19 Update: April 14, 2020

At his daily press conference, today at a new, 94-bed Cape Cod field hospital, Gov. Baker said he and other Massachusetts leaders will decide when Massachusetts is ready to ease current Covid-19 restrictions, based on public-health concerns, rather than having it imposed from above.

Baker said officials have begun considering how to re-open the state, but cautioned: "We have a lot of work to do before we would put a plan in motion," especially now, with what looks to be the peak of the Massachusetts Covid-19 wave approaching. To do otherwise, to begin letting more people go back to work and get out and about before the state is really ready, "will only make matters worse" and "squander in many cases a lot of the progress we've made to date," he said.

A key part of getting ahead of the pandemic, he said, will be contact tracing, where newly diagnosed Covid-19 patients are asked for names and phone numbers of people they've been in contact with recently so they can in turn be contacted and told to self quarantine and what symptoms to look for. The state and Partners in Health are currently setting up what Baker said would be the largest contact-tracing system in the country - with Partners in Health hiring some 1,000 tracers.

The current Massachusetts state of emergency expires May 4. Baker did not say whether he would extend that.

Baker said he readily agreed to participate with six other Northeastern states on Covid-19 recovery planning, all of which he said are key economic partners with Massachusetts. He said it's vital to coordinate responses with states where their decisions could affect us and vice-versa, and that because each state seems to be at a different state of the pandemic, it's especially important to ensure that one state doesn't do something that might hurt people in another state.

In the end, he added, however, "we will always put the needs of the people of Massachusetts first."

He added that in addition to 400 ventilators supplied by the federal government - out of more than 1,000 requested and originally promised - the state has managed to obtain additional ventilators through private sources, which he did not detail. He said the state is continuing to look for more ventilators and added, "we've had a very good working relationship with FEMA on this stuff."

In response to a reporter question, Baker explained why he doesn't wear a mask at his press conferences - at which he is separated by at least six feet from both other officials and the press: He wants to ensure residents can understand clearly what he's saying. He said that when he's walking around his hometown of Swampscott, he does wear a mask.

However, Baker continued his practice of not repeating reporters' questions, making it difficult sometimes for people watching his press conferences to understand what he's talking about. For example, he got a bit exercised about some question related to "gear" - he said he wouldn't comment on what sort of gear or how much gear until it shows up in the state, but only people at the press conference know just what the question was.

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