Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said Thursday he plans to lift the state’s capacity and distancing restrictions by next month, provided that vaccination numbers keep improving and cases continue to decline.
“If our COVID numbers keep trending down, and our vaccination numbers keep going up, we plan to lift our mitigation measures, capacity restrictions and social distancing requirements on June 15,” the Democratic governor said Thursday at a press conference.
Northam said that the state would follow the mask guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, adding that the state has seen fewer than 1,000 new coronavirus cases per day for the past two weeks.
“We’ve been following the data and watching the numbers for more than a year,” he said. “This has informed every single decision that we collectively have made. And today, the data give us a very clear message — the vaccines are working.”
