6 things need to happen before NJ can lift COVID-19 restrictions, Murphy says.

Byline: Daniel J. Munoz

Gov. Phil Murphy unveiled a six-step guideline for just what the state's health care landscape and the COVID-19 outbreak need to look like in New Jersey before the administration begins to relax its near-total lockdown in a "number of weeks, not months."

Touted as "The Road Back: Restoring Economic Health through Public Health," Murphy's plan andguidelineslack specific dates for when certain milestones should be reached, same as the national plan rolled out by the Trump administration earlier in the month.

"[E]veryone up here, and our respective teams will be guided by one overarching principle and one principle only as we plan our state's reopening," Murphy said in his Monday prepared remarks. "It is this:public health creates economic health."

That means, according to Murphy, that "before we reopen non-essential stores and businesses, before we can reopen our parks, or before we allow in-person dining in our restaurants," patrons and residents need to have the assurance they can avoid the risk of exposure to COVID-19.

As of Monday afternoon, the virus infected 111,188 New Jersey residents and claimed 6,044 lives. Still, state health officials have pointed out that the rate of new cases has flattened in recent weeks, staying at between 3,500 and 4,000 a day.

Meanwhile, hospitalizations have steadily dropped in the past week, prompting state officials to eye how they could slowly lift restrictions.

Murphy's plan would be part of a regional approach, done in lockstep with Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. U.S. President Donald Trump's plan allows for states to enact their own strategies or band together for multi-state collaboration.

"For us to rush ahead of either Pennsylvania or New York, or any of our other four state partners or vice versa would risk returning our entire region back into lockdown mode," Murphy said.

"I'll be very surprised if a restaurant in Jersey City has a different protocol than one in the Lower East Side of Manhattan."

The reopening would likely be statewide, not county-by-county.

"The minute they open up two or three parks, either a county park or a state park in those counties, you get the rest of those counties if not the rest of the region showing up," the governor said.

The road map

Under the first state guideline, the state would need to see a 14-day drop in the number of new cases and hospitalizations.

"We cannot look at just one day or one...