Today we're going to talk about employers and how they think about reopening as states start to reopen. Virginia's announced something called the Forward Virginia plan, which they'll start to loosen and reopen businesses in stages. California has something similar called the California's Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience. What these plans generally do is reopen businesses stage by stage. As instances of COVID-19 go down, fewer people are tested positive with it, there are fewer hospitalizations. As protective gear becomes more widely available, these states will ease up on their orders, and you can see those plans for those individual states online.
Other states like Georgia have taken their own road to this. Georgia's opening rather rapidly. On April 27th, they're going to take the next step, which expanded that to in-store retail services, and dine-in restaurants, and movie theaters. Believe it or not, and it's already past that date now, retail store services, dine-in and movie theaters and shopping malls in Georgia are opening, and there's a lot of controversy there.
There's some interstate packs that have come together. New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Rhode Island have formed a multi-state council that's going to work together to reopen their states in a coordinated way. They're obviously geographically proximate. Then, California, Oregon, Colorado, Nevada and Washington announced something similar called the Western States Pact, where they'll collaborate in their shared regional economies to reopen. The same is true in the Midwest where Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, and Kentucky are going to work together to reopen their states.
Some things to remember, even after everything's reopened, retail stores are open, movie theaters are open, your bar or brewery that you own is opened, remember to disinfect things frequently. There could be a second wave of COVID-19. Set up social distancing tape or something like that, so that people know where that six foot distance is. To the extent that you can, encourage people to stay apart from each other, encourage people to use curbside delivery and pickup, and try to limit in-person visits to your business for appointments only. Limit walk-in traffic and things like that. Also, another thing that I think a lot of businesses already do, but if you don't do it and you're a small business, think about getting cashless transactions in place. Something like Apple Pay or Google Wallet or something like that. Ways where you don't have to exchange money by hand or touch credit cards or things like that. Cashless is good, touchless is better.
